Macrium Reflect restore issue / question...?

Hi all - awhile back folks here had suggested to use Macrium for restoring Windows installs rather than drive clones. I had tried it on an issue I was having awhile back and all was well!

BUT, tonight I've tried it again and run into a snag.

Essentially, I created an image from a friend's dying older laptop (artifacting video card) running Win10 and was going to load that image onto her brand new HP.

Now....the old Acer had an upgraded 500GB SSD in it, and the new HP has a 256GB NVME drive.

When trying to restore using Macrium on the new laptop, when I just told it 'restore this image to this disk', it failed with an insufficient space warning. So, I did some research here on the TenForums and I saw a post that said 'Oh, when restoring an image to a drive smaller than the original drive, instead of restoring the image to the disk, just copy over the partitions in the right order and shrink them to fit. OK, great...so I did that!

But, I have another issue. The old Windows install was an MBR install and the disk on the new machine is formatted as GPT. I had read this shouldn't be an issue as long as you leave the small GPT partition at the start of the disk when you restore partitions, so I did that.

BUT....after Macrium booted into it's WinPE environment and successfully did it's clone, on reboot, Windows just does a 'Startup Repair/Diagnosing PC' boot loop and never boots into the partition I restored with Win10 on it.

So....TL/DR:
1. Cloned Win10 partitions in order from a known good-booting 500GB SSD to a smaller 256GB NVME drive in the correct order.
2. Left the GPT partition at the start of the disk to let it remain a GPT disk.
3. Restored partition fails to boot.

How would I go about getting the restored Windows partition to boot correctly again?

Thanks! :)

- - - Updated - - -

OK - an update - I just let the 'Startup Repair/Diagnosing' boot loop happen again, but went into the command prompt and used DISKPART and List Volumes to show me what's on the 256GB drive....the partitions are all sorts of messed up. I guess I did something wrong somewhere.

SO......I've got a known-good Macrium Reflect backup of the MBR 500GB SATA SSD from her other laptop on my external drive, and a GPT 256GB NVME drive to restore it to....

Currently doing a fresh install of Win10 back onto the new laptop so I can reinstall Macrium to try this again.

How do I successfully restore that Reflect backup from that external drive onto the smaller NVME and keep the NVME disk as GPT...? :)

Darkstrike said:

But, I have another issue. The old Windows install was an MBR install and the disk on the new machine is formatted as GPT....
1. Cloned Win10 partitions in order from a known good-booting 500GB SSD to a smaller 256GB NVME drive in the correct order.
2. Left the GPT partition at the start of the disk to let it remain a GPT disk.
3. Restored partition fails to boot.

How would I go about getting the restored Windows partition to boot correctly again?

I have successfully restored a Reflect system image of a Legacy/MBR machine to a UEFI/GPT one.

To get all the right GPT/EFI partitions I first clean installed Windows 10 on the UEFI machine. I then restored JUST the C: partition from the Legacy/MBR image to replace the C: partition created by the install.

And yes, it won't boot (yet). The final step to get a working machine is to boot from the Macrium recovery USB and select its option to 'Fix Windows boot problems'. This rebuilds the BCD table for you.

Use Macrium Reflect Rescue Media to Fix Windows Boot Issues

Bree said:

I have successfully restored a Reflect system image of a Legacy/MBR machine to a UEFI/GPT one.

To get all the right GPT/EFI partitions I first clean installed Windows 10 on the UEFI machine. I then restored JUST the C: partition from the Legacy/MBR image to replace the C: partition created by the install.

And yes, it won't boot (yet). The final step to get a working machine is to boot from the Macrium recovery USB and select its option to 'Fix Windows boot problems'. This rebuilds the BCD table for you.

Use Macrium Reflect Rescue Media to Fix Windows Boot Issues

Thanks once again for the reply Bree! I am doing a clean Win10 install on the new laptop as we speak. I don't have a Macrium USB though? I was just using the software on the hard drive (as in this is a BRAND new laptop and I just completed the first-time setup on it for Win10, installed Macrium and did my thing)? Should I set up a recovery USB as well then?

How exactly do I restore only the C:/ partition? As somebody who is mostly used to just doing disk clones with Acronis or Clonezilla, Macrium is a bit new to me...

- - - Updated - - -

.....new issue.

Booting from a Win10 USB to reinstall Win10 on the new HP and it's not showing any hard drives in the Win10 install program....at all...tells me to try loading a drive, but then asks me to insert a disk....?

SIW2 said:

Is then disk recognized in bios? If it is, then you might need some drivers - most likely irst if it is a very recent mobo.

Yes, both are recognized in the BIOS - it has two disks, a 256GB NVME meant as the OS drive and a 1TB SSD meant as the Data drive.

How would I find out what drivers I'd need? It's a BRAND NEW HP laptop, so very recent.

OK - the mobo would be HP, but there are no drivers listed there for storage beyond the card-reader. It's an Intel CPU, so looked around on Intel's site and found some recent NVME drivers...stuck those on a flash drive, tried the Win10 install again....still doesn't see the NVME drive...OR the SSD drive :/

SIW2 said:

These

https://mega.nz/file/asE0BRjC#GMnbtN...i77vxVDCIK8RxY

OK, will give them a try and report back in a moment.