Black Screen While Cloning

I don't know what to do. I've tried everything. I am literally about to break down crying. I've been at this for six and a half hours now. I've completely run out of space on my 320GB hard drive, and I've been trying to clone to my new 1TB since I got home from work.

I've currently got windows 10 on a small HDD that I need to transfer to my newer, bigger drive. I do have multiple hard drive slots, but that does not help me in the slightest, as I need the OS on the big one. Don't ask why, it's complicated. Point is, I can't use the little one anymore and I need the OS as well as my files on the big guy.

I've tried 2 different cloning programs, each one taking ages to finish copying. The problem is, everywhere I go says the reason I have blackscreen when I try to boot is because I'm missing the 100MB hidden boot partition. But it's sitting right there.



I've tried booting with only the new HDD installed, tried 100 boot and BIOS settings, different slots, completely formatting the new HDD and starting over from scratch with the same program and a different one.

I've even tried booting from a recovery disk. That won't work either, and gives me the same black screen with a single horizontal bar blinking in the top left corner. So what the hell can I do? It's not like I can afford $160 for a new windows disk.

What programs are you attempting to clone with? First thing I notice is that your old System Reserved partition is just that - a System Reserved partition marked as active which indicates legacy type MBR booting. The new 100 mb boot partition is marked as an EFI System partition and not set as active - that indicates UEFI and GPT type booting. That is what the problem is.

I would recommend two programs:
MiniTool Partition Wizard Free and Macrium Reflect Free. It would also probably be a good idea to have an empty USB flash drive (or CD) to make a Macrium Reflect Free Rescue USB/disk with.

Install MiniTool Partition Wizard Free. Delete all the partitions on the new hard drive. Make sure it is set for MBR partitioning type. The icon for the disk itself should say basic MBR. If it doesn't, on the left column will be an option to convert GPT disk to MBR disk - click that. Again this is all operations on the new 1TB disk only.

Then install Macrium Reflect Free. I would create a boot USB/CD and boot the computer from it, but you can also do the cloning from inside Windows too. Use Macrium Reflect Free to clone the old hard drive to the new hard drive. After Macrium is done cloning, examine the new disk again as in your OP. You should see the 100mb partition on the new disk listed as a System Reserved Partition and set as active just like the 100mb partition on the old disk.

Disconnect the old hard drive - move the new hard drive to the first SATA connection on the motherboard where the old hard drive was connected. Boot the computer with only the new hard drive installed. Use MiniTool Partition Wizard to expand the C: drive partition into the free space at the end of the disk. If that is successful, then you can add the old hard back to the system in the second SATA connection.

Best Free Partition Manager for Windows | MiniTool Partition Free
Macrium Reflect Free


Actually - Kyhi's rescue USB/CD has both utilities included on it, you can just download that and burn it and boot the computer from it and do all the operations from it:
Windows 10 Recovery Tools - Bootable Rescue Disk - Windows 10 Forums

The reason I suggest either Kyhi's recovery disc or a Macrium Rescue Disc is because when the computer is booted from it, Macrium will have an option under the restore menu to fix Windows startup problems which may fix the booting problem if just new cloning doesn't.

Finally, you won't have to purchase a new Windows 10 disc. You can make your own, scroll down to Download Tool now on this webpage:
Windows 10

So I used Macrium and now when I boot it says "Starting Windows repair" and then "Choose your keyboard layout" but neither my mouth or my keyboard work. I've tried different devices and they both work with the other hard drive and in BIOS

Please post the disk management screenshot again with both hard drives connected.

I got it to work. I wiped it all again, made sure it was set to MBR, redid the clone, set it as active, then ran automatic startup repair. Now it runs just like it did on the old hard drive, with the exception that when I boot up it always asks which OS I want to use, even when there's only the one dive in there but I can live with that. Thank you so much for your help!

MountainDrew said:

I got it to work. I wiped it all again, made sure it was set to MBR, redid the clone, set it as active, then ran automatic startup repair. Now it runs just like it did on the old hard drive, with the exception that when I boot up it always asks which OS I want to use, even when there's only the one dive in there but I can live with that. Thank you so much for your help!

Glad you got it working! You can change the boot menu options by running msconfig then select the boot tab:


Set the timeout to 0 seconds and you won't get the boot menu at all. Also, I know it won't make sense, but do not check the box for make all boot settings permanent - just leave that unchecked and apply.