M.2 SATA clone to larger M.2 SATA. Win7. Not bootable
I'm a bit stuck here....I have a Clone of my laptop's M.2 SATA 256GB, which I have cloned to a 500GB M.2 SATA chip/disc. I need to now make it bootable. I did the clone via Acronis 2014 (the version I had at the time) and I have just now upgraded and installed Acronis 2020.
What's the simple way to make this bootable. Since I have to boot from the M.2 disc in the laptop and clone it to the new chip that's in a SATA enclosure hooked up via USB.
It looks like all the Windows files are there and it seems to be a good clone. Just not booting when I swap out the M.2 discs in my Dell M6500.
Any help please!!!???


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Hi,
Be sure the new M.2 is a "GPT" type drive.. Most all of them require this..
If it is not, the EFI Boot Partition will not be found on the new drive.. You may need to re-clone, or as mentioned, create an image of the entire old M.2, the restore it to the new M.2..
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Thanks guys! The original M.2 Msata is a 850 EVO 250GB, model: MZ-M5E250BW and it is my boot Win7 OS disc. So in order to boot I have in the laptop Msata slot. I can remove a SSD disc (I have 2 installed) out of my laptop and put the new Dogfish Msata 500 GB M.2 Msata. in a case and in an internal SSD slot.
I'm thinking it sounds like I have to put the new 500GB Msata in a drive slot, boot from the 250GB do a Back-up to another HD/SSD i have in the Dell M6500, then use that back-up to recover to the new 500GB Msata.
Hmm, sounds like a lot of time. Too bad Acronis can't do a straight across bootable clone from the one disc to the other. Darn.
I've done a clone from the Boot/Win 250GB msata, to the new 500GB with it being in the SSD slot inside the laptop, but that won't boot when put into the msata slot.
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Hey guys, has anyone used MiniTool Partition Wizard? It seems that can do what I need.
https://www.partitionwizard.com/clone-disk/clone-nvme-m2-drive.html
I just need to clone from one M.2 (mini) SSD to another larger M.2 (mini) SSD.
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Acronis needs to see the target boot disk in the location it will occupy after the clone process. You will note a message at the end of the recovery about syncing the OS. This makes the target disk bootable.
If laptop bios setups were more robust you probably would not need to follow this procedure.
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Jeff what is your motherboard make / model and firmware? You may be limited by the bios features or need to make some bios setting changes for the dogfish drive to be bootable (regardless if you used clone or backup/recovery). Many motherboards have slot limitations... for instance, certain motherboards don't allow any booting from certain slots, or using certain slots will disable other ones. Plus, since you are changing the connector where the OS drive is/was, you likely need to go into the bios and change the boot priority to make sure the drive is detected and that it has 1st boot priority. On top of that...
After cloning, did you pull out the original drive and only have the dogfish drive attached - that is key in many systems so you don't have a hard drive signature collision since the clone will emulate the same hard drive information and can "confuse" the bios as to which one is supposed to boot if it detects 2 that are supposedly the same? If so, did you go back into the bios and check the boot priority to make sure the correct drive was listed first?
Last, how did you start the clone process (please use rescue media... but did you boot it UEFI mode or Legacy mode and what mode was your old OS installed in)?
One of the big "keys" for booting rescue media (Acronis or otherwise) is to to boot it to match your currently working OS and bios configuration so that the resulting output is the same too. Windows installer discs have the same limitation. For example... if you were to try and install Windows 10 by booting the installer in UEFI mode, but the hard drive you want to install it on is MBR (legacy), the installer will not give you that disc as an option to install it on. And vice-versa, if your hard drive is GPT/UEFI but you boot a Windows installer disc in legacy/MBR mode, it won't give you that disk as an option to install on either.
Acronis rescue media has a similar limitation. However, where the Windows installer will just say no disk is available, Acronis will let you proceed, but the result will likely be unbootable if you booted it in a different mode.
So:
1) Double check your motherboard port information in the manual and make sure it supports booting on the mini SATA port (it likely does, but be sure).
2) Check your original OS install type and confirm if it is Legacy or UEFI.
3) Then use your rescue media to clone (or backup and recover - you should have a backup JUST IN CASE anyway - it may save you). Make sure to boot it to match the OS install disk type (use your motherboard one time boot menu to specifically pick one if your bios firmware gives you the option). For reference, see this KB article:
https://kb.acronis.com/content/59877
4) After the clone or image recovery, before you boot the system at all, remove the old drive so only the new one is connected. boot into the bios and make sure the correct boot priority is listed with the new disk. If it's supposed to be UEFI/GPT this will normally say "windows boot manager". If it's supposed to be legacy/MBR you would normally pick the hard drive brand (however it's listed in the bios firmware - it would probably have dogfish in the name though.
There are lots of tools out there that can clone and/or backup/recover. You may run into these same types of issues with any of them. Use whatever works best / easiest for you. Always make sure you have a good backup of some kind first though. And make sure your motherboard slots and/or OS don't have other limitations either. Unfortunately, Windows 7 is not very forgiving with any kind of change due to very poor driver support. Windows 10 makes all this a lot easier, even though bios firmware is much more complicated than when we only had to deal with legacy as an option.
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Jeff, Partition Wizard is ok for the job. Acronis does this too, as your hopefully preferred backup / restore tool.
Some caveats:
Win7 does not support GPT bootable partitions as it does not support secure boot.
If you choose to clone via ATIH 2020 go to tools > all tools > add disk >
add as MBR or same as the source
then in Tools clone the disk.
If the disk is larger than 2 TB you cannot do this without partitioning as MBR does not support larger single partitions as 2 TB.
even if your computer is now Win10 and your source is / was Win7/8 with MBR you can convert this in Windows ISO via mbr2gpt, which implies
- you have Win10 1809 or better 1909 on a bootable stick (Microsoft Media Creation tool)
- your target OS on the new NvME is Win10 1809 or later
- your GPU is compatible with UEFI GOP (check with GPU-Z)
- your UEFI / BIOS should support UEFI and you should disable CSM / legacy mode
hope it helps!
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Thanks all for the info.... Ok, here's info:
Laptop: Dell Precision M6500 (rather older).
BIOS: Dell Inc. A07, 9/25/2011 the latest for this laptop
OS: Win7, which is on the mSATA M.2 EVO 250 GB (mini disc) that I'm trying to clone to a ----> Dogfish mSATA M.2 500GB (mini disc)
I boot from the EVO 250GB, the mSATA M.2 disc I'm running low on space and trying to swap to the new larger 500GB.
When I clone it (which I now have a full clone with a good partition) I removed a secondary SDD (E drive) and cloned to the new Dogfish 500GB in that SSD slot, so it was on the motherboard and next to the 250GB boot M.2 mSATA.
I then remove the 250GB M.2 mSATA disc from it's slot, replace with the new 500GB M.2 mSATA and boot I get an error no boot disc.
Now I do have an option and something to ask you all!
I have another computer (a video production computer) which I have a SATA drive doc with two SATA drive slots. It connects to the computer via USB 3.0. Can I use Acronis to clone the 250GB in one slot to the 500GB in the other slot and in theory that should be an exact clone. Wouldn't the boot clone too?
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I may have missed something in the details but either you do a full backup of your m2 250 to an external USB3 drive or external SSD and then restore back to the m2 500 gb.
or you clone it in a different computer, both should work, but you may not change the MBR / GPT scheme during this.
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Thanks Karl.
The interesting that happened when I did a backup of the 250GB (source OS M.2 mSATA) when it backed up to the 500GB with Acronis I got an error 'disc full'. WTH? full, the 250GB has 242GB of data (OS data and of course all the crap that gets put to the OS (boot drive)) and the 500GB had nothing. How can it be full?
I've ordered another mSATA/SATA case to put my source 250GB into and then do the same with the other case I already have and clone the 500GB to the 250GB (source OS) disc on a different computer that has a dual SATA docking ability. That should make it an exact clone. And I'll do it as MBR, which is what the source 250GB M.2 is.
Hopefully that will work when I put that cloned 500GB into the M.2 slot and try to boot.
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Jeff, just to avoid any confusion, what drives are involved here again?
mSata is not the same as NVMe M.2 which is where some confusion can arise.
Having just been dealing with some Dell Inspiron laptops using mSata drives, these were basically stripped down SATA 2.5" SSD's (no casing around the drive) to fit into a smaller space but which fitted to a standard SATA interface.
The NVMe M.2 SSD's are card type drives that look like a desktop memory module but with the connector on the short end and plug into a PCIe slot. These drives require UEFI / GPT.
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I then remove the 250GB M.2 mSATA disc from it's slot, replace with the new 500GB M.2 mSATA and boot I get an error no boot disc.Now I do have an option and something to ask you all!
I have another computer (a video production computer) which I have a SATA drive doc with two SATA drive slots. It connects to the computer via USB 3.0. Can I use Acronis to clone the 250GB in one slot to the 500GB in the other slot and in theory that should be an exact clone. Wouldn't the boot clone too?
After the clone or recovery, did you go into the bios and confirm the boot order? A lot of times, it will point to something like the DVD rom, or a USB drive instead of the preferred disk and give you the boot error.
For question #2.... it depends. When you do a "live" clone in Acronis, the bootloader will be forced to match that of the system the clone is run on. For instance, if you take a drive from a legacy computer, attach it to a dock on a UEFI computer and run a clone, it will clone the drive, but it will be UEFI at the end! This will make it unbootable in this scenario if you take it and put it back in the original system.
Long story short, I would forget the clone. I would take a full disk backup of the original and store it somewhere like an external USB drive.
I would then use the rescue media and restore that image to the new drive.
Remove the original drive, install the restored drive... go into the bios and make sure you have the correct 1st boot priority pointing to the new drive and see how it goes.
Please keep in mind that how you boot you rescue media is important too. Is the original OS installed as Legacy/MBR or UEFI/GPT?
https://kb.acronis.com/content/59877
Use the Dell one time boot menu (F12) to specifically boot rescue media in legacy or UEFI mode once you've verified the original OS install type so that it matches.
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