Having big problems imaging windows 10 to a larger disk

Hi,

Hoping to get a bit of insight to find out what's going on.

I just installed Windows 10 on a new computer. This was installed initially on Samsung Evo 850 500GB drive.

Prior to that I had win 7 loaded on Evo 970 500GB so I decided to swap them over. I bought a Evo 860 1TB drive and imaged win7 to that. Then imaged win10 from the 850 to the 970.

No problems both images booted up fine. But (and using Samsungs migration software) started experimenting because the imaging was so fast I decided to just whilst getting to know win 10 imaging across to the 1 TB as I loaded stuff and played with it.

However, the problems start when I test the 1TB image.
It simply doesn't boot nor did it ever go into recovery after 3 unsuccessful boots and I don't know why.
I then tried the windows system backup image. This didn't work either.

The result is a BSOD which says INACCESSIBLE BOOT DRIVE and will reboot ad infinitum never going to recovery (because as I discovered later there is no winre.wim present)

Just to recap:

1) Clone 500GB Evo 970 to 500GB 850 (Windows 10) - OK
2) Clone 500GB Evo 970 to 500GB 850 (Windows 7) - OK
3) Clone 500GB Evo 970 to 1TB 860 (Windows 7) - OK
4) Clone 500GB Evo 970 to 1TB 860 (Windows 10) - Not OK

The process to get this to boot was painful booting from a recovery cd.
format the boot partition using :

Code:

format m: /fs:ntfs
bcdboot  d:\windows /s m: /f all

then just for good measure (not sure if these could be left out but so many attempts led me to do them anyway:

Code:

bootrec /fixmbr
bootrec /fixboot (returns:  access denied )
bootrec /scanos (says 0 os found)
bootrec /rebuildbcd

At this point I finally I get a recovery screen F8 for options leading to a big list, one of them being to boot to safe mode.
I do that , it enters fine and then I reboot and it boots normally with no problems after that.

After all that I tested the process several times and found that the above tends to work and the only thing that does. As to why the Winre.wim is not present I have no idea but trying to enable it gave me the missing winre.wim message in the source (so it was never installed). I later extracted it from install.wim and put it into \windows\system32\recover and ran

Code:

reagentc /enable

and that put winre.wim into the system reserved partition after which I tested it going to restart to recovery.

however, subsequent tests of the above imaging process still leads to no recovery begin invoked and hence the "inaccessible boot disk" stop code and infinite reboots.

So .. sorry for the ramble .. head is spinning after so much of this but I'm trying to give as much info as possible for anyone that may be able to shed some light on why the imaging of windows is failing just under the above circumstances.

I would point out one thing about Samsung Migrate vs Windows system image backup. The former ends up cloning the drive but not the partitions whereas the latter actually clones the partitions and therefore leaves a final 465GB unallocated partition.
Initially I thought maybe the Samsung method was the problem but SIB shows it's nothing to do with the problem.

Any help figuring this out would be appreciated, I just want to know why and searches for this specific problem has not really given me any joy.

 

Louiscar,

A few questions.

MBR or UEFI system?
Which partitions are on the old SSD?
Did you perform a clone/copy procedure or an image/restore procedure?
Did you remove the old SSD from the computer before the first boot from the new SSD?

 

Hi Brian,

1) All drives in question are MBR
2) The ssd has 2 partitions. System reserved and data but this may be less relevant (more on this in a bit)
3) I tried both methods
a) Samsung Migration which transfers the whole drive the resulting clone has the system partition and the data partition as one would expect
.. when having problems to eliminate Samsung migration I then used
b) System image backup which is an image /restore procedure.

The only difference I could see between the two is as stated in my OP (but possibly not as clear as I'd like) is that :
with method a) I end up with 2 partitions as with the original but of course the 2nd is twice the size and
with method b) 3 partitions mirroring the partition sizes and leaving the 3rd as unallocated space.

4) Yes now I remove the disk. I actually had to do so with b) above as this wouldn't write the image to the destination drive due to signature conflict. Either way as I have to repair trying things like bootrec / fixmbr etc which doesn't seem to have a target I removed all other drives so things like that wouldn't mess with them. Bit of a pain as the M2 is less convenient to remove.

As for the comment at the end of 2)
I started like this:

The build started with Windows 7 on the Evo 850 drive and when I added the M2 disk I then (using Samsung migrate) copied this to
the M2 Samsung 970 500GB. Then I decided to move to Windows 10 but in the effort to keep a working copy of Window 7 bought the Samsung 860 1TB
I cloned the win7 to the 860 and installed Windows 10 on the M2. Later decided to swap the copies over, I'll leave that to your imagination .. but point being, it is why I can attest to all the combinations of migrations that worked vs the one that didn't.

So what is fascinating me at the moment is that using Samsung migration to image windows 7 from either of the 500GB disks to the 1TB worked fine.
Once only I can confirm that Windows 10 from a 500GB to another 500GB disk worked fine. Only the one combination doesn't work : 500GB to 1TB
but as I say I only did the 500 - 500 once then I did some software installations (no drivers) and then tried to transfer to the 1TB.

Lastly all the working versions with S/Migrate were fine just setting the boot drive in the bios to test.


But I am at a loss to believe that 2 methods of cloning fail just because I am transferring to a larger drive.

Edit: uploaded disk manager view if it helps: https://ibb.co/SwwQ9TV

 

Louiscar,

The last reports of using Samsung Migration in this forum were a few years ago and they weren't complimentary. The Windows imaging tool is the worst imaging tool available.

You are attempting to boot multiple Windows OS and the most painless way to do this is to use a Boot Manager. I suggest BootIt Bare Metal (BIBM). It includes an imaging/cloning component called Image for DOS. (IFD) It also includes a partitioning app for Create, Delete, Undelete, Format, Resize, Slide, Copy, Align, Paste, Trim, Properties, Edit File and BCD Edit.

There should never be problems in cloning to a larger drive. A boot manager enables you to hide each OS from the others so there is no interaction. The booting OS should be C: drive and the other OS should not have drive letters. You can have all OS on the one SSD or on different SSDs. It doesn't matter.

BIBM lets you have more than 4 primary partitions on each drive, if desired.

 

You wouldn't do this of course but as an example of using Disk 1...

sysres
Evo 860 W10 resized smaller
15 copies of Evo 970 W10

ie 16 Win10

 

Brian,
The end desire is to keep copies of the os. Probably I won't need the windows 7 soon enough but I do want to make backups. One of the concerns is actually that of the M2 having problems, I can be up and running by swapping over but I didn't want to constantly boot between drives so the boot manager wasn't something I considered frankly. Bios control seems enough as I can disable booting from drives and change the boot order. But more importantly I'd just be able to clone back to the main drive essentially and since the ssd is cheap enough and fast enough it's worth it to keep one clone at least on a drive that mirrors the m2. It takes all of 5 mins to clone from the m2 to the 850.

Regarding Samsung migrate, I understand the disdain and it is the first time I've used it - there are no controls it's simple and won't deal with anything other than Samsung drives, however, I've had a lot of difficulty finding anyone that has a problem with it when coming to the cloning to a larger disk although there were some mentions (not only related to Migrate) about problems with the 860 itself and problems with bios' however, none of those really meet with my experience. I don't however, believe the 860 is faulty in any way as win 7 works and I've checked it's health over and over.

I had it in mind next to try some better cloning software. With my other system I had Ghost 15 installed and made regular image backups however, I won't be installing it as that has reached end-of- life I understand and is not compatible with W10.

I just thought I'd throw this here in case there was something obvious that maybe I had missed.

Thanks for the recommendations, I will look at the minitool products next I think but I have to admit right now - even if the cloning tools I've used are not great the fact that I've used 2 completely different products and both failed spectacularly in exactly the same way suggests that I am probably going to meet the same problem with other tools.

Just my gut feeling at this point.

 

Understood and actually I started off thinking along similar lines when I got the 860. I thought I could use that for 2 images on 2 partitions until I found out that I needed a better tool to do that as the ones I had looked at just wipe the whole drive unless you store images rather than clones.
Good to know that Bootit will allow that - how about the main Partitions Wizard as that was what I was looking at.

Slighty confused by their list of products and what comes with what.

For now though the first thing I need to do is do a successful bootable copy to a 1tb drive. As SSDs get cheaper the next thing will be a 1TB m2 and I don't want to have problems when I swap to that so I have to find out what is going on first.


Edit : sorry I'm getting confused BIBM is a Terabyte product .. have looked at so many things recently ...

 

If you buy the TeraByte software, get the Special Bundle for $49.98. It gives you everything. The extra $10 more than BootIt Collection is well worth it.

All TeraByte apps have a free 30 day trial. I suggest you trial IFD. It's not the fastest but it's very easy to use and you could get Win10 copied or restored to your largest SSD. You don't have to remove the old SSD from your computer before booting the new SSD if you choose "Change Disk ID and GUIDs".

 

Thanks Brian, I saw that bundle deal .. it looks pretty good. I will try one of the imaging apps maybe the windows one just to make sure I still haven't got the same issue

 

Well IFW is a fail ... I'm not sure it's worth trying IFD , there's something fundermentally wrong.
Maybe the 860 IS the problem.

 

Louiscar,

Can you tell me in detail what you did with the SSDs and with IFW? What failed?

 

Not likely. I have the 860 EVO and I used Image for Windows successfully regularly.

 

I just loaded the trial for IFW.
Installed it - not sure some options were presented regarding MS VSS or Terabyte method .. not sure what it was about but chose first option.

I chose to do Copy . From 970 to the 860 and the same result - non bootable due to Inaccessible boot drive.

Next I chose to copy the 850 to the 860 (Windows 7) - perfect boot

Next I chose to copy 970 to 850 - non bootable due to inaccessible boot drive.
That last one is surprising and maybe I was dreaming before but I thought it was successful. I guess I only thought I had done that - I will try again ..... just to be sure.

Ok actually in one sense I feel better as I was about to return the 860 but this eliminates the problem. It appears it's just copying Window 10 that is the problem - Win 7 is no problem whatever way I do it.

This is really confusing frankly ..

 

Good to know, then maybe I'm looking at a bios issue but I haven't found any telling reports so far.

What I'd love to know is exactly what is different between the 2 boot partitions or rather what is missing.

 

What kind of disk are you using; mbr or gpt? This is my main bootable disk. It's GPT, thus the multiple required partitions. I needed gpt because I needed more active partitions than mbr allows. I backup everything that's blue, except G: and it works just fine.

 

It's mbr

 

If it's mbr, all you need to image is the system reserved partition and c:\. Anything else is not needed.

 

That is all I AM trying to do ...

 

That's nothing to do with image/copy. It's a boot configuration issue.
So you copied 970 to 860 and 860 doesn't boot. Correct?

Can you remove 970 from the computer and plug 860 into the port 970 was using. Now try and boot 860.

 

[quote="Brian k"
So you copied 970 to 860 and 860 doesn't boot. Correct?

Can you remove 970 from the computer and plug 860 into the port 970 was using. Now try and boot 860.[/quote]

No I can't do that since the 970 is a M2 disk - the 860 is a Sata SSD

 

OK. Remove 970 and 850. Then try to boot 860.

 

I've done that 100 times already nothing works. As I've described before, I have removed all other drives so many times I'm worried about the connections going duff on me

Edit : remember 1 thing if it works with windows 7 then it should work with windows 10.
Question: what is the difference between how those two o/s boot ?

Edit 2 : was trying to use IFW to make and image - did that but it won' let me restore to a different drive which seems crazy and pointless to me. Only offers me the current working o/s drive.

 

Please try removing the two drives.

 

Brian,

But i've just said I've done that it doesn't change a thing and never has. Unless I misunderstand what you are asking me to do. The only drive in the system is the Samsung Evo 860.

 

Louiscar,

I guess I misunderstood. 860 is the only drive in your computer. The other 2 have been disconnected. Can you leave it like that for a while while we run tests?

A few questions first. Which was the first OS in this computer? Which was the second OS? Was the first drive in the computer when the second OS was installed?

Can you download the trial BootIt Collection...

https://www.terabyteunlimited.com/bootit-bare-metal.htm

Make a boot disk from BIBM (UFD or CD). Instructions are in the PDF.
Boot BIBM and get into Partition Work. Do a BCD Edit on the 500 MB partition. The BCD store should be in this partition, not the Win10 partition.

https://www.terabyteunlimited.com/kb/article.php?id=492