Cannot Boot off of Cloned SSD

Cloning is a one step process that occurs in real time. You start at noon and maybe it's done at 1227.

Imaging is a two step process:

1: you make an "image file" of whatever partitions you choose, saving it to some other drive. It's a huge file; maybe 20 or even 100 GB. By itself in that state, the huge file isn't of much use.

2: You later (5 minutes or 5 years later) formally "restore" that image file to the new drive. At that point, the drive becomes bootable and useful.

Tutorials on this site.

Most here use Macrium, but other applications will work.

It has a bit higher success rate than cloning.

Go ahead with cloning until you get fed up. Then try imaging.

An image holds all only the data from the disk whereas a clone includes additional information including disk geometry information, partition information, etc.

See this link:

Disk imaging vs. disk cloning: What’s the difference? | by Macrium Software | Macrium Software