It is not possible to clone a Windows C: drive and boot from the clone. Oh, plenty of info will say it's possible, but it's not.
It is not possible.
Discussion
I must have been doing it wrong then🤔😜
Huh. It used to be, but it’s been a long time since I did it.
You can clone the drive and boot it, but i has to be the entire disk, use Acronis or some other Disk imaging tool and then just write the clone on the other disk and it should work, though windows licenses will usually become invalid
careful trying to boot with both drives still in the system. some cloning software clones the uuid of the drive and it can confuse your mobo/bios
Did full disk clone w/a few diff tools. Problem seems to be:
(orig setup)
C: on SSD1
UEFI + D: on HDD1
(clone's setup)
C: on new nvme
UEFI + D: on HDD1 (unchanged)
* Will not boot
Tried adding UEFI partition to new nvme, unplugged SSD1 and HDD1. Nope.
Tried adding UEFI partition to SSD1, then cloning to nvme. Nope.
Basically... just gonna nuke it from orbit and install a fresh Windows 10 on the new nvme with no other drives connected. Then I'll be guaranteed to have a self-contained UEFI + C: universe on the nvme. Then will back HDD1 as a data drive and wipe its UEFI partition.
ps - I hate that I know any of this. I didn't want to learn about any of this.
I remember using revrdist on mac 20+ years ago in the computer lab to keep the Macs running perfectly. Windows machines were always a pain.
Nuclear option has begun!
(yes, the old sys drive is still bootable if I need to revert)
The last time I tried to do something like that, I gave up in defeat. And then I accidentally wiped a partition I wanted to save (not badly, thankfully) when trying to fix it.
Sounds right. I don't use Windows much so I realized there wasn't enough worth saving on my original install. So I just installed a fresh copy on the new drive. So dumb, but problem solved.
