Restoring to same computer with new SSD

James, welcome to these public User Forums.

A couple of comments:

You do not need Acronis Universal Restore for any backup & recovery being performed on the same computer.  AUR is only needed when there doing a migration to a completely different computer, i.e. one with different hardware, of a different make or model etc.

You need to create the Acronis rescue media for ATI 2020 on your laptop and confirm that you understand how to boot the laptop from that media using the same BIOS boot mode as used by the installed Windows OS.

You will also need to have created a full disk backup of the current laptop SSD and store this ideally on an external USB storage drive.

See forum topic Steve migrate NVMe SSD where I documented the process that I used to upgrade my own laptop SSD to a larger size that I have used on multiple occasions successfully.

See KB 63226: Acronis True Image 2020: how to create bootable media and KB 59877: Acronis True Image: how to distinguish between UEFI and Legacy BIOS boot modes of Acronis Bootable Media

KB 63295: Acronis True Image 2020: How to restore your computer with WinPE-based or WinRE-based media 

Thank you, Steve.  The new SSD will arrive on Thursday and I'll review and follow your materials carefully, and report back. 

Since it did occur to me, though, is there a simple explanation why I can't just clone the existing SSD to the new one and just put the new one in and boot up?

James Bates wrote:

Since it did occur to me, though, is there a simple explanation why I can't just clone the existing SSD to the new one and just put the new one in and boot up?

Please see KB 56634: Acronis True Image: how to clone a disk - and review the step by step guide given there.

Note: the first section of the above KB document directs laptop users to KB 2931: How to clone a laptop hard drive - and has the following paragraph:

It is recommended to put the new drive in the laptop first, and connect the old drive via USB. Otherwise you will may not be able to boot from the new cloned drive, as Acronis True Image will apply a bootability fix to the new disk and adjust the boot settings of the target drive to boot from USB. If the new disk is inside the laptop, the boot settings will be automatically adjusted to boot from internal disk. As such, hard disk bays cannot be used for target disks. For example, if you have a target hard disk (i.e. the new disk to which you clone, and from which you intend to boot the machine) in a bay, and not physically inside the laptop, the target hard disk will be unbootable after the cloning.

Personally, I very rarely use cloning as it will always require both the old and new drives to be connected for the process which exposes them to any mistakes that might be made, i.e. choosing the wrong source drive to clone from and getting two empty drives!

Using backup & recovery is much safer! The original drive is backed up then removed, set aside in a safe place disconnected from the computer.  The new drive is installed and the backup restored from the storage drive.  If something doesn't work then you can always go back to the starting point and put back the original drive!

I did review the cloning video and now understand that in the cloning process the new disk is to be installed first and then the existing disk cloned by external connection. That said, however temptingly simple the cloning process seems, your advice is much appreciated and I will follow it when the new drive arrives tomorrow.

Your detailed instructions are helpful and I believe I understand everything with the possible exception of Step 10 about moving partitions, but will leave that until after finishing the other tasks.

In creating the rescue media (on a flash drive), the instructions said that if I chose the simple method to create it, ATI would create the optimal media type for my computer.  They also said, though, that if my PC runs Windows 7 or later (mine is Windows 10), the rescue media would be WINRE-based; and when I performed the operation it reported that it was creating a Linux-based media, with no apparent option to change this.  Not wanting to get complicated, I proceeded with the simple option and have successfully tested the media after changing the BIOS to boot from it.  I hope the Linux aspect won't compromise the operation.

And one, hopefully last, question for now.  When creating a backup, ATI suggests adding a "survival kit" so that the bootable media is included on the same disk as the backup, thus obviating the need for a separate flash drive.  I have limited USB ports and so this option is attractive, but is there a reason not to use this?

As far as I am aware, there is no drawback to including the survival kit on the USB drive. The only risk element is something going badly wrong when repartitioning the dive to add the FAT32 partition that will contain the survival kit. I have a vague recollection of this reports of things going wrong, including the failure of the creation of the survival kit. I do not recollect any instances of damage to the existing partition.

Ian

Thanks, Ian. I've now run into what seems like a fundamental problem with the backup file -- its size.

When I looked at the most recent backup file activity from today (shown below) the program indicated there were 335 GB to back up, but only 206 GB are in the backup file.  Assuming the backup of the entire PC must create a larger file, I tried a new backup being sure the direction was to back up the entire PC, and I set the option at a single version backup.  Same result.  There was a time when I did incremental backups but for purposes of getting the data to a new hard disk it seemed cleaner to start over and have a single file.  

Can this file size be correct or am I doing something wrong?  

James, I would expect that the size backed up is correct and that the difference in the size to recovery versus size backed up is down to a mix of compression used (typically 20% saving) and the default exclusions of some very large system files (pagefile.sys, hiberfil.sys, swapfile.sys and any system restore point data), that gets rebuilt on reboot into Windows (for the three files).  Microsoft don't enable system restore points by default in Windows and haven't done so since 2017.

Yes, in my Backup tasks it's quite a long list. Look James at Backups > Disk backup options > Exclusions and you will find the "Exclude files matching the following criteria:" as there are the files Steve mentioned as well as numerous others.

Good luck upgrading your PC's SSD.

I did notice the long list of exclusions last time I looked through the options.  Had no idea those files could be so large in total.

Well, good news and bad news.  I got the new SSD installed, and ran the restore operation.  The program reported that the restore completed successfully but I couldn't figure out how to proceed from there and didn't get a response to Ctrl-Alt-Del so shut down using the power button and tried to reboot (having disconnected the rescue media and external drive containing the backup).  I got a blue screen with a message that after several tries Windows had failed to initialize (something to that effect, should have taken a photo).

I am now trying the restore operation again; it showed the new (destination) drive as having 476 GB allocated -- which is exactly the size of the previous SSD, so something good happened, apparently, in the first restore.  Unfortunately it won't finish until after I need to leave for a few hours this evening, so I checked the box to have the program shut down the computer at completion of the operation, in hopes that it's just my improvident shutdown attempt.

Any suggestions about what may have gone wrong, or how to create logs that would help with analysis, will be appreciated

Until this gets resolved, my thanks to Steve for steering me away from the cloning operation; the previous SSD is sitting happily, safely by itself.

Did the recovery again, same result whether with or without recovery media connected . Photo of screen uploaded. 

James, sorry to hear of issues with the restore.

What actual type of SSD are you working with here?  I should have asked earlier but assumed that it was a standard 2.5" SATA drive as you didn't suggest different.

Your mention of not having an additional slot in your initial post for this topic now makes me wonder if you are working with a PCIe card type SSD such as a NVMe M.2 one?  These are about the same size as a memory module but with the connectors on the short edge.  This is what I have in my HP Omen laptop as the primary drive with a second 2.5" SATA drive used for data storage.

Please see topic Steve migrate NVMe SSD that I referenced earlier and check that you followed the same steps that I have used.  The backup image needs to be of the full source SSD drive, including all hidden / system partitions as these are needed on the new SSD for it to boot correctly into Windows.

See also my YouTube video showing a similar restore using a Virtual Machine here

Steve, I don't want to waste space here, but I cannot thank you enough for your patience and persistence.

The new SSD is indeed an NVMe M.2. I am totally ignorant on the types of SSDs so am attaching a photo of both the new (Samsung) and existing drives. In ordering a new SSD I relied on Best Buy (the large U.S. electronics retailer), from whom I bought the HP Envy 17m-ce1013dx, to suggest an appropriate drive, and they are the folks who said there was no second slot.  So if I have the wrong drive, shame on them. If there is a second slot I haven't seen it when I open up the PC but haven't looked carefully.

I did try to carefully follow all of the steps you outlined. When creating the backup (which I've now done three times) I was careful to check "Entire PC" as the source and didn't fiddle with any of the options such as unchecking the exclusion boxes shown in Options. I got the new SSD initialized (sorry, American spelling) on the first recovery try and it no longer shows as uninitialized in subsequent tries.

I can open and run the YouTube video but can't get audio, which works in other YouTube videos.  I'll keep trying. For the moment, at least, I've reinstalled the original SSD and it works fine.

Ah, no sound needed in the video.  I did see one difference in method between this and your instructions.  In the instructions, when you added a new disk you initialized it with the GPT partition scheme, so that is what I did.  But in the video, you chose the MBR scheme.  If that's what I should have done, can I now change the partition scheme on the new SSD?  

James, most NVMe M.2 SSD's require to use UEFI & GPT, so please do not attempt to use MBR for yours.  My video was done using a Hyper-V VM which was Gen 1 (aka Legacy / MBR) so was correct for that specific restore.

My own HP Omen 15 is a gaming laptop (not used for gaming!) and has both a NVMe M.2 slot plus a standard 2.5" SATA drive.

One difference per your last update is that I never use 'Entire PC' when doing backups as by definition it will include all disks in the system.  That is fine when there is only a single disk but with having 2 disks, I always click through on the Source selection box to reveal the further options, then select Disks & Partitions, followed by selecting the single disk I want to backup.

Sounds a bit counterintuitive, at least to the uninitiated, but I'll make a new backup and try it. In looking at the Disks and Partitions option, the box next to the external drive (where the backup will reside) is unchecked; in the internal drive, both Windows C: and EFI System Partition are checked, and presumably I leave them as is.  I'll report back.

Still the same result as before, I'm afraid. ATI shows the recovery as having succeeded but when the PC attempts to boot up I get a black screen titled UEFI loader, with three choices: 1 is to boot to ATI, which does work but I presume that's not where I want to be; 2 is System Report; and the third choice, labeled c, is to continue booting. When i select c it makes a few tries and then produces the error message I uploaded previously.

James, from your last update, it sounds like you are still attempting to boot from Acronis rescue media rather than from the new SSD.

Check your UEFI BIOS boot option setting and ensure that this is set to 'Windows Boot Manager' and not pointed at any other device.

I disconnected the external drive and changed it to "Windows Boot Manager" but same result. Could the disk itself be a problem even though ATI showed a successful recovery?

Changed the boot BIOS setting, that is.

Last night I ran an HP hardware diagnostic for "Blue Screen With Errors." It had a yellow triangle with exclamation mark next to "Hard drive/SSD short DST Check" followed by the word WARNING, but at the conclusion of the diagnostic it said all tests had been passed. I don't know if this is relevant.

I'm running the test again and see the same warning but it has an hour left to finish.

When I first thought I'd be cloning my SSD, I bought a USB connector for the new drive but hadn't used since there seemed no reason to do so. Just for fun, I opened it up this evening and put the new SSD in it.and connected it to a USB port. The PC running the original SSD recognized it, and File Explorer seemed to report the Windows files were there.

In the interest of experimentation I changed the BIOS order back to using the USB device first. To my amazement the PC booted into Windows, and I do think I did this properly but don't know how to check it for sure.  Thus encouraged, I reinstalled the new SSD in the PC but I get the same error message as before.

James, I would suggest doing a comparison of the partitions on the two SSD's to see if they are identical or not?  Both should have an EFI System partition.

When you changed the BIOS order to boot from the USB first, then it suggests that the external drive may be using Legacy / MBR boot mode?

I have an external adapter that I can use with one of my older NVMe M.2 SSD drives which when I boot from it, I choose the UEFI 'Windows Boot Manager' option from the external drive, not just the USB drive.

When booting from the Acronis rescue media it is important to ensure that the correct BIOS boot mode is used, hence the earlier reference to KB 59877: Acronis True Image: how to distinguish between UEFI and Legacy BIOS boot modes of Acronis Bootable Media

If you boot the rescue media in Legacy mode, then it will convert the backup from UEFI / GPT to Legacy / MBR during the recovery process.  If booted in UEFI mode, it will keep the format for a UEFI / GPT backup but convert a Legacy / MBR backup to UEFI / GPT.

Steve, in all my boot attempts I've always seen what your article describes as a UEFI bootup.  I've never seen a blue color boot-up screen.

Here's a screenshot of the layout of both disks. Disk 0/Windows (C:) is the original SSD, Disk 1/(Windows (E:) is the new SSD. I hope this is useful.   If the partitions need to be changed, a little guidance would be appreciated.

James, thanks for the screen image of the two disks.

Both look to be correct in terms of both having an EFI System Partition and the Windows one, so both are therefore using GPT, so provided when the new SSD is installed the BIOS is pointing to 'Windows Boot Manager' from that SSD, all should be good to go.

The extra unallocated space on the new SSD is a known issue with an easy solution once you are booting from that SSD.

There is one key point shown in the image that may be having an effect, and that is the fact that the original smaller SSD is shown as being 'BitLocker Encrypted' in the image.  The presence of BitLocker hasn't been mentioned in this topic before, and if the backup is created from within Windows, then it should not include the encryption because it has to be unlocked to perform the backup, but that is about the only straw I can offer you to grasp at this point!

I would suggest turning off BitLocker for C: in the BitLocker control panel, creating a further new disk backup and doing a further restore.

I kinda wondered when I saw that.  No idea of how Bitlocker came to be there but it must have seemed to be a good idea at some point.  I'll remove the encryption and have another go.

Well, I had really high hopes that, to mix metaphors, your straw would be the one that broke the code.  But unfortunately nothing's changed.  I can boot the new SSD using the external connector, and the old one from within the PC, but the new one won't boot from within the PC.  I just have no idea what mistake I must be making.

I note that under Status in the Disk Management screen the old one shows Boot, Page File, and Crash Dump in addition to the Basic Data Partition, and the new one shows only Basic Data Partition, but perhaps these additional files are ones that get created in the process of booting up.   

James, this is turning into quite the saga for something that should be relatively easy based on my own upgrades!

BitLocker was clutching at straws as shouldn't have been a factor.

My thoughts at this point are along the following lines:

Are the original and new SSD's actually of the same type?  What are the exact makes / models for these SSDs?  PCIe card drives come in a variety of different formats.

One way to prove if the issue is directly related to the new SSD would be to try to do a clean, vanilla install of Windows 10 (or 11) to that drive when installed in the laptop.  If you don't have the Windows install media then you can download this directly from Microsoft using either of the following links:  Windows 10 Download  Windows 11 Download

Thanks. I did attach a photo of the SSDs, side by side, to my 14:16 post on April 10. I recall seeing more verbiage and numbers on the reverse side of the Intel SSD so if you need that also let me know and I'll pull the drive.

If indeed this is the wrong SSD I have until the 22nd to return it, so there's a little time. If that's necessary I'd sure want to be able to delete the data before returning it, but that's for later.

Steve, attached are photos, front and back, of the original Intel and new Samsung SSDs.  Meantime I'll download the Windows 10 install and try that.

Trying the Windows install but it won't cooperate. I went to the Microsoft site and searched for GPT, but what I found is over my head, I'm afraid.

James, thanks for the further information and images.

Your original PCIe card drive is indeed different from your new one!

The Intel card is a combination of Intel Optane memory with Solid State Storage capacity whereas the Samsung is a pure SSD with no Optane memory.

I am not an expert on Optane memory but I suspect that this is at the heart of the issues here!

Enchantech (Bob) or Mustang (Paul) may be better able to comment on Optane.

Regarding the Windows install question, then that is another quirk of how Acronis writes partitions on the drive!  You could click on the OK button to proceed with the install of Windows which would wipe the SSD and write the partitions in the order that Microsoft expects.

See HP webpage: Steps to Replace Optane with SSD in M.2 slot for a similar scenario but where the user looks to be migrating from an internal HDD to an NVMe SSD, so removing a pure Optane memory card from the M.2 slot.

One thing that you should look at is if there is an option to disable the Optane memory part of the M.2 SSD then reboot and check that you can still run Windows correctly, after which the backup and recovery to the new SSD should then work.

Ok. I'll investigate. Meantime, when I disconnected the flash drive containing Windows 10 install, the PC rebooted and proceeded to install a clean version of Windows, i.e. without any of my programs -- which defeats the purpose of a recovery. (It wouldn't allow the option that's supposed to keep applications and such.)

Presumably if I try a recovery again I'll get the same failure to boot to Windows because ATI replaces everything on the SSD?

James, your current backup image was taken with the Intel Optane memory feature enabled and the new SSD doesn't have such a feature as it is a pure storage drive with no memory component.

You would need to put the original Optane + SSD back, boot into Windows, disable Optane and reboot, then create a new backup without Optane enabled to use to recover to the new SSD.

Got Optane disabled, the backup and recovery options took much longer than before but were successful.  Unfortunately the new SSD still refuses to boot to Windows from within the PC (and the old one does fine).  

I put the new SSD back on the external connector and, as before, it booted up just fine into Windows.  I went to Disk Management and got a new message:  "You must initialize Disk 0 before Logical DIsk Manager can access it."

The default partition style given was GPT, so I chose it rather than MBR, clicked OK, and rebooted from the external SSD.  Now the Disk Manager screen looks like this, when I've booted from the external SSD. 

It has been a real education but I have to admit to some discouragement at this point, and a feeling that I've been wasting your time with the wrong piece of hardware.  

James, sorry but I am struggling to offer any further suggestions here other than to look into whether there is an equivalent larger version of your current Intel Optane + SSD card that could be used.

The alternative would be to perform a clean install of Windows and all your programs etc on the new Samsung SSD, which negates using Acronis and means a lot more work to rebuild the laptop to how it is today!

You could try asking in the HP forums where I found the other question about Optane as I cannot believe that you are alone in hitting this issue!  Optane is intended to give you a performance boost with the extra memory it provides but not everyone will want or need that.

I'll do that, and if I succeed I'll report back.  I refuse to go through the hassle of reinstalling Windows and all the programs.

Thank you again, Steve, for your yeoman efforts.

One last request.  Assuming I'm going to try returning the Samsung SSD to the vendor, I want to connect it via USB and delete the substantial information that's now lodged in the drive.  Can you suggest the program to use, and is there any particular way to go about it so the disk is still usable by someone else?

I am disappointed that Acronis can't get this done.  That said, I must say that I stumbled upon Acronis several years ago after I sent an Asus laptop back to the manufacturer because it wouldn't operate on battery.  I carefully did a Windows backup before sending it out, but when the unit came back with a new motherboard, Windows wouldn't recognize its own backup. A search on the web found Acronis, and miraculously ATI not only found the backup but restored it flawlessly. 

James, ref 'cleaning' the new Samsung SSD, then you can still use Acronis to do that when the drive is connected via USB.

In the Acronis program menu is an option for Tools and Utilities where you can use either the 'Add New Disk' option to reinitialise the SSD and remove all data from it, leaving it as all unallocated space, or else the Acronis Drive Cleanser tool to do a more forensic wipe of the drive, though this can take many hours to run, especially if multiple passes are selected etc.

I would be tempted to use the Add New Disk option initially, then maybe use the Drive Cleanser to ensure no data can be recovered by a partition recovery tool.

Just one word of caution: please double check that you have selected the Samsung SSD when using these tools or else run them from the rescue media environment with the original Intel SSD removed.

I used the Add New Disk tool, selecting GPT rather than MBR, and ATI reports the Samsung was successfully initialized, but Windows Disk Management no longer recognizes it as a drive, which seems opposite to adding a new disk.  Assuming I want to still tinker with the disk, can I fix this?

Apologies.  Disk Management does recognize it, as Disk 2, but Windows Explorer doesn't.  

James, because Disk 2 is shown as Unallocated, there is no partitions or formatting for the drive that Explorer can open / work with, which is to be expected.

If you wanted to tinker with Disk 2, then you would need to set it to be GPT and create a single NTFS partition on it.

If the intention is to ensure none of your data is present on Disk 2, then Acronis Drive Cleanser should still see Disk 2 as an option to wipe.

Just looking at your latest disk management image, the 27GB unallocated drive space shown is where you have disabled Optane, so is a part of the original Intel Optane + SSD drive.

Thanks.  Jumped the gun a bit -- in the interim I figured out how to use Disk Management to assign a drive letter and format.  Sorry.  All good for now.

Jim

Steve, I want to report that I finally succeeded, though with different software.  An HP forum member reported having tried several different programs, including Acronis, in dealing with an Optane disk, and finally succeeded with something called Macrium Reflect, so I investigated that.

Prior to this I had tried a number of times to solve the boot problem by using a Windows 10 install disk to run its troubleshooter, and also to run some other fixes from a command prompt.  None worked.

Early on I recall posting a concern that ATI's documentation said it would prepare a rescue disk in Windows PE, but in actual practice it prepared one in Linux and didn't give me the option to change it.  After our last communications I did see a post from Mustang relating to Optane and referencing a tool to prepare a Windows PE disk, but by this time I was mentally exhausted and so I didn't pursue it.

In short, the Macrium software prepares rescue media in Windows PE, which eventually came in handy.  I did a cloning operation, after which the new SSD still refused to boot into Windows, but in its rescue media the Macrium software did have a process to fix Windows boot problems, and eventually it worked.  Another nice thing about Macrium is that after doing a backup with the SSD's new settings, the restore function will resize partitions without the need for an outside program -- something that I'm surprised ATI doesn't seem to have.

With all of that said, I wouldn't have succeeded without your considerable help, in the course of which I added a lot to my computer education.  Thank you again.

James, good to read that you have achieved a successful outcome for this issue.  I also run Macrium Reflect 8 Home  alongside Acronis on my systems as have always tried to have more than one tool available, plus I regularly use MR 8 Free when working with computers for friends & neighbours that have no other backup software as it is something that I can leave on the machines even if set to run once a month!