How do I boot off the partition I cloned, not the original partition

So I'm having a lot of trouble doing my Win 7 to Win 10 upgrade (long story, other threads here), and then I realized that if I screwed up, I could damage my Windows partition , which also contains like 100+ GB of installed programs (but no real user data). I figured that I should do all my experiments and trials on a spare copy of that partition.

My Windows C: partition is on an SSD, but I cloned that partition to a spare HDD. When I try to boot off the HDD, it still wants to boot off the SSD. How do I get that HDD to boot up properly?

x509

NavyLCDR said:

From a Command Prompt (Admin) try running the following:

bcdboot C:\Windows /s C: /f BIOS

The drive letters in red will be the drive letter to the HDD windows partition.

NavyLCDR,

I just did the help file for bcdboot and it does not have an /f flag. Is BIOS the OS Loader ID?

I'm still on Win 7 SP 1 plus all patches.

Thanks.

x509

the /f flag is the firmware options

BIOS, UEFI, ALL

With the SDD in place - we will add the HDD to the SSD Boot files (BCD)

Assume the HDD is drive letter H

bcdboot H:\windows

Now if you are disconnecting the SSD then you would use the command as Navy suggested
As that command will add the boot files to the HDD
Or you could use that suggested command - and then change the boot order in the bios to boot from the HDD first and the SSD second