Macrium reflect backup and restore SATA to NVME

Chrysalis · 20 Feb 2021

Ok guys another conundrum, but this isnt a critical issue rather something that would be nice to fix.

So I was temporarily without my m.2 drive, and windows 10 was actually originally installed on a spare SATA SSD I had.

When my m.2 stick was available again, I backed up the image, and restored it using the winPE macrium.

The system wouldnt boot and of course I remembered it is because nvme driver isnt in early load, so I fired up winPE macrium again, ran the redeploy tool, and manually navigated it to the correct NVME driver, it was then installed via Macrium and the system booted. (this is v6 of macrium, they didnt get auto detection of nvme working in redeploy until v 7.1).

I then manually enabled intelppm service using process hacker (for some reason the Macrium redeploy tool disables this).

At this point the OS is functioning "almost" normally, with 2 minor problems.

1 - SFC reports problems, the problems I confirmed from the log are the copies of the NVME driver put in place by Macrium, as you may imagine, this is not easily fixable, these are required for successful boot. I just have to remember SFC will never pass again but /scannow should at least fix any "other" bad files it finds.
2 - When using Resource Monitor and monitoring the i/o, the drive letter for C: is replaced with K:0, it looks like some kind of internal remapping has been done and this tool does not hide it. In Explorer and all other windows it is labelled correctly.

There is no system issues, I consider both these problems cosmetic in nature, SFC e.g. still is able to scan files and will be able to fix "other" files, but will report it is unable to fix the NVME files put in place by Macrium.

The Resource Monitor problem appears to be completely cosmetic only.

But I am curious if any of you guys have ever seen or experienced this and do know of a fix (aside from of course installing the OS from scratch on NVME). :)

Railtech · 20 Feb 2021

What drivers are being installer by Macrium for the NVMe disk? Did you ever have Intel AHCI drivers installed on this system?

I read a post on Macrium forum about V6 loading Intel AHCI drivers for NVMe disks when the original installation was done on an SATA SSD. Seems the trick here is to after the redploy, boot the machine into Safe Mode, uninstall the Intel driver, then reboot the machine letting Windows install the driver for the NVMe disk. I presume this is so that RAID mode would be selected for the NVMe drive rather than AHCI mode.

Chrysalis · 21 Feb 2021

stornvme.sys the microsoft driver.

Windows doesnt activate it in the early boot process if the initial install was not a nvme device.

Yep that redeploy process is what I did, but it seems it doesnt activate the driver the same way as windows does by itself, it instead makes a copy and activates the copy. That second copy is what throws off sfc.

I dont have intel achi drivers installed. So its msachi and stornvme, the issue I am pretty sure is related to the early load process during boot. It is possible macrium 7 handles this better, but since I dont have that version it is only speculation.

If I go in device manager and tell it to use the original copy in the driver store, it accepts it, but the second copy cannot be removed, the OS says it is in use, this is why I said its not an easy fix.

Railtech · 21 Feb 2021

Uninstall the device in device manager and when you do include uninstall of the drivers. Restart and Windows should load copy one of the drivers as you put it.

msahci is the same as ahci, just the MS version.

Version 7 of Macrium does have fixes for this issue. Support for version 6 ended in 2018. You would be well served by updating the application.

Chrysalis · 21 Feb 2021

Uninstall is greyed out, and yep I know msachi is the default windows one, that was to explain it isnt because I am using 3rd party drivers.

If you are really sure this issue with SFC doesnt occur with v7 macrium redeploy, I could maybe go back a couple of days to restoring the SATA image again after upgrading a license, but I am only going to do that if Macrium then upgrade that to a v8 license for free when v8 is launched.

The v7 fixes as was explained by macrium tech support was that they automatically find the driver so it can be added to early load, it was inconclusive in their statement if they actually changed how the redeploy tool adds the driver after it is found. The process of me manually selecting the driver to use in v6, is it says it cannot find the driver, so I then navigate to the original driver in the windows driver store folder. After windows boots, there is then a second driver in windows driver store with the same driver.

Ok I am going to try it out on v7, may as well, will see if I can make the WinPE from the trial version, if I cannot, I will contact Macrium to see if I can get the discount up to v7 and then from there free to v8 when released.

Here is extract from the SFC log.

021-02-21 17:11:45, Info CSI 000055c2 [SR] Beginning Verify and Repair transaction
2021-02-21 17:11:45, Info CSI 000055c3 Hashes for file member [l:12]'stornvme.inf' do not match.
Expected: {l:32 ml:4096 b:0bc006f10a481c0fe2327476ff87ca562ebffeae3c717093e0cf038c3d180fcd}.
Actual: {l:32 b:1ce23d5a39afb40f3a65e33c71978bd26064d7c38f922f60a7d6fa92f22f2906}.
2021-02-21 17:11:45, Info CSI 000055c4 [SR] Cannot repair member file [l:12]'stornvme.inf' of dual_stornvme.inf, version 10.0.17763.1432, arch amd64, nonSxS, pkt {l:8 b:31bf3856ad364e35}, type [l:14]'dualModeDriver' in the store, hash mismatch
2021-02-21 17:11:45, Info CSI 000055c5 Hashes for file member [l:12]'stornvme.sys' do not match.
Expected: {l:32 ml:4096 b:46d97ffb061b8e1b62151d5544d705753dc92c91f49bde8d6085017680b8d551}.
Actual: {l:32 b:b5fc5f80f110e5df06a38a9153050c23f0117ad6455008a6fba5b9de73c91b2a}.
2021-02-21 17:11:45, Info CSI 000055c6 [SR] Cannot repair member file [l:12]'stornvme.sys' of dual_stornvme.inf, version 10.0.17763.1432, arch amd64, nonSxS, pkt {l:8 b:31bf3856ad364e35}, type [l:14]'dualModeDriver' in the store, hash mismatch
2021-02-21 17:11:45, Info CSI 000055c7@2021/2/21:17:11:45.433 Primitive installers committed for repair
2021-02-21 17:11:45, Info CSI 000055c8 Hashes for file member [l:12]'stornvme.inf' do not match.
Expected: {l:32 ml:4096 b:0bc006f10a481c0fe2327476ff87ca562ebffeae3c717093e0cf038c3d180fcd}.
Actual: {l:32 b:1ce23d5a39afb40f3a65e33c71978bd26064d7c38f922f60a7d6fa92f22f2906}.
2021-02-21 17:11:45, Info CSI 000055c9 [SR] Cannot repair member file [l:12]'stornvme.inf' of dual_stornvme.inf, version 10.0.17763.1432, arch amd64, nonSxS, pkt {l:8 b:31bf3856ad364e35}, type [l:14]'dualModeDriver' in the store, hash mismatch
2021-02-21 17:11:45, Info CSI 000055ca [SR] This component was referenced by [l:80]'Package_1163_for_KB4598230~31bf3856ad364e35~amd64~~10.0.1.9.4598230-1588_neutral'
2021-02-21 17:11:45, Info CSI 000055cb Hashes for file member [l:12]'stornvme.sys' do not match.
Expected: {l:32 ml:4096 b:46d97ffb061b8e1b62151d5544d705753dc92c91f49bde8d6085017680b8d551}.
Actual: {l:32 b:b5fc5f80f110e5df06a38a9153050c23f0117ad6455008a6fba5b9de73c91b2a}.
2021-02-21 17:11:45, Info CSI 000055cc [SR] Cannot repair member file [l:12]'stornvme.sys' of dual_stornvme.inf, version 10.0.17763.1432, arch amd64, nonSxS, pkt {l:8 b:31bf3856ad364e35}, type [l:14]'dualModeDriver' in the store, hash mismatch
2021-02-21 17:11:45, Info CSI 000055cd [SR] This component was referenced by [l:80]'Package_1163_for_KB4598230~31bf3856ad364e35~amd64~~10.0.1.9.4598230-1588_neutral'
2021-02-21 17:11:45, Info CSI 000055ce@2021/2/21:17:11:45.443 Primitive installers committed for repair
2021-02-21 17:11:45, Info CSI 000055cf [SR] Repair complete

Railtech · 21 Feb 2021

So SFC cannot repair the stornvme.sys file due to hash mismatch, basically corruption. So you would need to take ownership of the corrupted file, remove it, and replace with a know good copy. It might also be possible to repair the file using DISM.exe /Online /Cleanup-image /Restorehealth. DISM has the advantage of using Windows update to replaced corrupted system files. I would try that first.

Chrysalis · 21 Feb 2021

yep I just fixed it now with DISM. Following what was stated here with some changes.

SFC /SCANNOW cannot fix storport.sys

I removed the restrict flag as it said it couldnt find source, also the unmount command fails, I think it automatically unmounted as I dont see a lingering mount folder in the desktop.

now sfc passes, and manual inspection of files matches the other systems.

What I will do when I get hold of a spare m.2 drive (someone sending me one next week), is test this process again on Macrium 7 on my spare machine, if I notice the same SFC problems I will report it to Macrium, and I will be updating Macrium to v8 when v8 is released.

Thank you, am really glad this is fixed, as the SFC thing probably would have bugged me for a while.

C:\>sfc /scannow



Beginning system scan. This process will take some time.



Beginning verification phase of system scan.

Verification 100% complete.



Windows Resource Protection did not find any integrity violations.

C:\Windows\System32>dir /a /s stornvme.sys

Volume in drive C has no label.

Volume Serial Number is 2076-A9FC



Directory of C:\Windows\System32\drivers



21/02/2021 17:33 130,888 stornvme.sys

1 File(s) 130,888 bytes



Directory of C:\Windows\System32\DriverStore\FileRepository\stornvme.inf_amd64_4dfe21ac05eb8341



21/02/2021 17:33 130,888 stornvme.sys

1 File(s) 130,888 bytes



Directory of C:\Windows\System32\DriverStore\FileRepository\stornvme.inf_amd64_4e56d37488727768



15/09/2018 07:28 129,848 stornvme.sys

1 File(s) 129,848 bytes

Railtech · 21 Feb 2021

That's great, glad that you have it fixed now. Sounds like a good plan you have with Macrium as well.