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Inaccessible boot device

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Hello everyone. 

I'm trying to swap my 128gb m.2 drive for a 512gb one, using acronis 2016.im using Windows 10.

 

I created a full disk backup onto a 1tb hard drive also in the laptop. I then created a recovery disk using winkle mode. 

Everything seemed to work fine, the computer booted from the USB, found the backup, appeared to apply it to the new drive, and turned off. 

When I turned it on however, I had a boot device inaccessible bsod, the laptop rebooted, and then sat in a loop of displaying the lenovo logo text for 10 seconds, then restarting again etc. Plugging in the recovery drive didn't do anything, and neither could I access the bios by hitting f2 like normal. 

Thankfully putting the old drive back in the laptop still works and it boots.

Is it an issue that the old drive is a b+m key, and my new drive is m key only? 

 

I can post more details when I get home in an hour or so if required. 

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It could be different drivers needed between the 2 m.2 disk variants since m.2 is a newer hardware than say a standard sata SSD which Windows 7, 8, 8.1 or possibly even Windows 10 have generic drives built in to it.  Or, it may just be that the 2 types of drives are just too different - not typically the case for hard rives in gerneral, but m.2 is a newer(ish) hardware so could be.  If there are specific drivers from the manufacturer for the new drive, try booting the system using UNIVERSAL RESORE offline bootable media and slip streaming the driver in with it.  If that doesn't help, try generalizing the image with Universal Restore after that... since you have the original drive still and can always take another image of it or fall back to it.

As for not being able to use your existing USB Acronis bootable media it should have nothing to do with the disk or Windows image on the new disk since everything prior to that is hardware level at the BIOS.  Try powering off your computer and dissipating remaining electricity (power down, unplug from AC and remove battery too if it is a laptop. Hit the power button a few times).  Then plug power and batteries in and bootup, quickly pressing whatever button you normally would to get into the preboot selection or BIOS.  

If you can get into the BIOS, a lot of the time, you can do a manual boot override from within it - selecting the drive you want to boot to from there.  If this option is available in your BIOS, and your bootable media drive is found, this should work.  If the bootable media isn't displayed though, may want to try making a new bootable media instead and trying again.

From what I've been able to research, it shouldn't matter if the old drive was B+M and the new one is Just M.  The new one (even though PCIE x 4) should fall back to PCIE x 2 if that's all the motherboard supports.

http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2015/02/understanding-m-2-the-interface-…

However, it seems like the BIOS has to support M.2 booting, which yours appears to since the old disk was also m.2.  Additionally though, it seems like m.2 drives have their own drivers so you'd have to slip them with Universal Restore if the drives utilize different Windows drivers.  You mentioend you couldn't get the system to find the UR bootable media though, so that is a problem.  Hopefully it will pick back up after completley powering down and allow you to put slip the drivers in.

One last thing I'm not sure of from the information you've provided so far... is your new m.2 drive AHCI or one of the newer NVME drives (Samsung 950 pro comes in both flavors if that's what you're using).  Your motherboard (depending on how old or how old the bios version is), may not support NVME drives for booting.  If that's the case, you'd be better offer swapping out the NVME vesion for an AHCI M.2 drive - speeds will be relatively the same in real world performance.  If it does support NVME boot drives, it should be an option that you can adjust in the BIOS.

http://www.legitreviews.com/samsung-ssd-950-pro-512gb-nvme-pcie-ssd-rev…

https://tinkertry.com/how-to-boot-win10-from-samsung-950-pro-nvme-on-su…

 

 

 

Thank you, as far as I know the drive is not the NVMe version...it's been a long time since I did any hardware stuff, all this M.2 stuff is totally new to me. The drive in question is:

Samsung SM951 512GB M.2 PCIe SSD
SM951 Series MZHPV512HDGL-00000
Capacity - 512GB

I had a quick look at the universal restore option...but it seemed quite complicated and had a lot of room for me to make a lot of mistakes. Is there a simplified guide to how to use it to make a general installer + an extra driver?

 

Additionally...I don't seem to be able to locate any kind of driver download for the Samsung SM951 M.2 SSDs, whether that is because it's a "client" SSD and not a more consumer-level one I don't know?

The SM951 is an AHCI M.2 disk so you should be good there as it should be the same as whatever you had before (assuming it is an older M.2 disk).  The downside to this drive is it is not a consumer drive and is really only meant for OEM builds so there is no consumer support and finding drivers may be difficult.  It's a nice drive, but if you're still able to return it, you may want to do so and try getting the 950pro instead as that is an upgraded consumer product with full warranty and downloadable drivers.  

Is your OS Win 7, 8, 8.1 or 10?  Win 10 should have drives enough to support your drive out of the box - Win 7 does not, Some report success with using a Win 8.1 OS.

Going back to your main question, Univeral restore has an option under "automatic driver search" to add a folder with drivers.  Download the latest driver for your new drive (may be diffiult though since this technically an OEM drive and does not have customer support - I'm not having any luck finding them, but there are forums with other possiibilties to try to:  http://www.tomshardware.com/answers/id-2800641/sm951-nvme-windows.html).  Extract the contents to a folder (must be the drivers, not an executable or zip file or anything like that).  Then click on OK and reboot and hope for the best.

https://kb.acronis.com/content/56637

Just make sure you're not doing this with your good "old" drive so you still have something to fall back on or re-image if it still doesn't work.

 

 

Chris,

Please confirm you used the "Recovering your system to a new disk under bootable media" process described in Paragraph 5.1.1.4, starting on page 70.  If so, did you select MBR and Track 0?

FtrPilot

I have to admit I had assumed if I was cloning the drive it was a case of selecting everything. I'll try again but following the instructions this time. 

I have also tried just doing a complete fresh install using Windows installation media on a USB drive. I had the same issue, where everything seemed to have installed correctly but then the loop began again. 

Don't forget to read all of subparagraph 12, where it discusses when you would select MBR and Track 0.

Hope this helps & works.

FtrPilot

 

As I was running out of time today, I did one final test, before trying the above.

I re-installed using the windows installation media. This time, somehow, it worked and logged in. When I rebooted though, I ended up in the same loop.

However, I tried taking the drive out, rebooting and powering off, then reinserting the drive. When I next powered on I checked in the bios to make sure the drive was listed to boot from, saved and exited. This time it worked properly.

So, are my problems coming from not correctly using Acronis the first time round, somehow making a corrupt MBR, which has since persisted in all my other installation attempts?

If so, is there a way to completely reformat the drive so that all partitions, MBR etc, are removed, so that I can just do a clean install of windows? I've noticed in the windows installer it reckoned the drive was an empty partition, yet in Acronis it had said there were two small (<1gb) partitions in addition to the main empty one, before I installed windows.

Tried fixing the MBR using command prompt without success (it was successful but the same thing still happens). I think I'll return the drive if I can and get something on the known compatibility list :( Hopefully the supplier will accept that the drive is faulty if it is only recognised when it is first installed into a system.

Can only open and close the laptop and take the drives out so many times before I have to admit it's wasting a lot of time!

Chris,

In your original post, you stated "created a full disk backup onto a 1tb hard drive also in the laptop" .... Exactly how did you create that backup?  Did you "Backup entire PC" or "Disks and Partitions" ?

Also, have you considered performing a clone?

FtrPilot

So to cover all my bases, I created the following:

 

Clone from the 128gb SSD onto a 2tb external HDD

"Backup of disk" onto the internal 1tb HDD

For some reason the clone wasn't visible/accepted, so I restored the drive using the disk backup image on the internal 1tb drive.

 

I now seem to have got it all working, by enabling legacy boot mode in the bios. I am unsure whether this would have any real repercussions in the future. Strange that one M.2 SSD booted fine on UEFI and the other didn't like it.

Chris,

UEFI is a key piece of the puzzle.

Here's what I believe happened...one of the experts may totally debunk my theory, which would not offend me, as I am always willing to learn.

When you performed your first restore, you selected MBR & Track 0.  By doing this, ATI 2016 converted your new SSD from GPT format to MBR format.  With your BIOS set the way  it was, your new SSD would not boot.

Regards,

FtrPilot

Thanks for the clarification. So when I did diskpart and clear all, it wouldn't have reset the SSD from MBR to GPT?

For future reference, is there a way to switch it back if I find the system is unstable in MBR mode?

Chris Moody wrote:

Thanks for the clarification. So when I did diskpart and clear all, it wouldn't have reset the SSD from MBR to GPT?

From the ATI user manual

diskpart
clean This operation removes all information from the SSD and overwrites the MBR with the default one.
exit

So, diskpart may have converted your new SSD to MBR. 

Chris Moody wrote:

For future reference, is there a way to switch it back if I find the system is unstable in MBR mode?

I recommend you do a google search on "Convert MBR to GPT".

I also recommend searching in the ATI 2016 user manual for GPT and MBR.

Regards,

FtrPilot

 

The diskpart clean all command will remove all data and partitioning information from the selected disk so the end result is a disk in a RAW state, in other words, void of anything, formatting included. 

In reading through this thread there appears to be a number of possibles that contributed to your troubles.  Nonetheless, you now have things working albeit in Legacy MBR mode.

In order to retain the UEFI boot mode on a UEFI capable device you must make certain that when you boot to recovery media that boot is done in a UEFI mode.  If not the end result of a restore will be Legacy MBR mode.  When this occurs the machine will not boot because the machine bios is attmpting to boot in UEFI mode but the boot partition is not found because it is incorrect.  Changing the bios to Legacy boot allows for boot as that is correct for the disk.

As far as drivers for your drive this is totally dependent on the storage controller embedded on the motherboard.  Since you do not list what laptop make and model you have I cannot determine what storage controller your device uses.  I would guess that it is an Intel controller but I do not like to guess.  If you can determine the make of the storage controller on your machine I can provide link to an appropriate driver.

If you wish to perform a clean install of Win 10 on the new drive (I would) and enable UEFI boot (I would) that is certainly and clearly possible.  If you wish to do this I would recommend a diskpart clean all run on the drive before you attempt a clean install.  In order to insure a UEFI enabled installation you must have the machine bios set to UEFI mode only boot with Secure Boot enabled.  You then must make certain that the correct boot mode for the installation media is selected when booted so that a UEFI enabeld install is performed.  I would suspect you are using an pre prepared Win 10 install media on USB stick and that this media is for a 64 bit version of Win 10.  When you choose the Windows install boot media to perform the Windows installation from the list of bootable devices in the machine bios, make sure you choose the media shown in the boot list that is preceeded by UEFI in the name.  This is the critical step you must get right in order to end up with a UEFI enabled installation.

Once booted and installation is executed the installer will convert your drive to GPT format and enable UEFI boot.  With this particular drive installation will be about half that or less of doing the same to an SATA III SSD.