Set windows to boot from a different drive (from a clone of Windows)

I have cloned my windows operating system from an SSD to the hard-drive on my laptop. I now want to boot my machine from this cloned version of windows on the hard-drive. In the 'old days' I have been battling with the BIOS settings and Windows Boot Manager - but can't work out how to complete this seemingly trivial task. Below is a screen shot showing the old Windows 10 OS on the C drive, and the clone on the F drive.

Back-story to this below if you are interested ..



Back story : I am very short of space on my SSD C drive (as can be seen from the image). I decided to upgrade to a high-performance 1TB SSD .. a Samsung 970 Evo. This is advertised as being very easy to use as Samsung provide a cloning utility to copy your current OS to the new SSD. However, THIS DOES NOT WORK ON LAPTOPS! :-( For Samsung's clone tool to work, it needs to be plugged into the mother-board on the computer. As most laptops like mine only have one SSD slot, the obvious choice is to use an SSD via a USB adaptor ... but Samsung's clone utility does not allow this. It will not recognise a Samsung drive on the end of a USB (even though the disk is perfectly well recognised by Windows ). I can't just image the current SSD - because the Samsung Evo requires special drivers and will not boot if I just make a clone of the current OS So .. my plan is to clone my current Windows 10 to the D drive on the machine. Boot from that. Install the Samsung drivers onto that version of Windows 10 .. then finally, remove the old SSD, put in the new Evo then do the whole process backwards to get my operating system back onto the Samsung Evo.

By the way ... strong recommendation .. DO NOT BUY AN EVO SSD for a laptop with a single SSD slot. Samsung have clearly not worked out how to migrate your current operating system to the new drive. When I contacted their support they were completely disinterested and have me a "RTFM" response .. which they pointed out says "Can't be used via a USB". Thanks Samsung.

Hi there
I can't see why a normal SATA-->USB3 adapter won't work (at least for "standard type SSD's -- the square looking ones rather than the things that look like memory sticks).

I've a few SSD's and they all connect easily -- I recommend the SABRENT adapter. It's possible a driver might be needed but these days all the I/O is usually handled by the disc controller on the Mobo and any internal electronics in the SSD device.

In any case why not just try it first -- these adapters only cost between 5 and 10 EUR so cheap enough to test to see if your ssd can be read / written via USB3 connector.

Macrium free is an excellent cloning / imaging tool used by loads of Forum members here.

I don't think I've ever had to install drivers for HDD's / SSD's for years now -- I think the last time when HDD's were just getting bigger (20 MB --yes Megabytes not GB) was considered large and WD came out with some bios driver so the device was seen as LBA (Large block Architecture) so all the sectors could be addressed properly !!!!.

I'm not saying I'm correct but I'd be very surprised if Windows couldn't see the SSD -- the other function of the software might be for various utilities that could be performed on the SSD but that's another issue.

If you actually want to BOOT Windows(i.e real windows not just a windows setup / install / repair disk) from a cloned SSD you need to fix 2 files in the windows/system32/drivers directory -- I've got a post or 2 on that somewhere on the forum explaining how to do it -- just search for it.

Cheers
jimbo

CountMike said:

As far as that Samsung 970 Evo SSD goes, you can install it's driver before you actually use/install

CountMike : Thank you. Do you have a way of doing that? When I ran the instal program for this device the first thing it does it to check if their is, in fact a Samsung SSD installed. if it is not, then it just bombs out and says "no Samsung SSD installed". I wonder if there is a way of working around their instal programme as it is very frustrating.

CountMike said:

Now for transferring OS to it, have you tried other cloning programs ? Like Download GParted Live - MajorGeeks which doesn't depend on OS actually running but works of a USB stick.
So, 970 evo in the laptop, old one on a usb adapter and boot of Gparted live.
Another way would be to make backup (by way of MR) of your old disk and restore it to new one but that would require another disk connected by USB to place backup on and restore from it.

I will look at GParted now. But I think that an issue may be this .. If I clone my existing SSD onto the new SSD without the Samsung EVO driver .. then when I instal the EVO and try to boot off of that, then it won't run (according to what Samsung 'technical support' () told me.

Hence my plan to clone existing OS to the hard drive running on the laptop, plug in the Samsung Evo into the SSD slot, instal the drivers (which I will be able to do at that point because I have a Samsung SSD installed), then reverse the whole process to get the OS back on to the Samsung Evo.

I have the clone on my hard drive .. I now just want to work out how I can boot off of the other driver rather than the SSD and I think I am on my way.

At the moment I think I am facing into a catch-22: (1) Samsung clone software won't recognise Evo connected via USB (2) Samsung SSD driver software won't install unless there is a Samsung SSD phyiscally plugged into the machine (not USB) (3) Can't clone the existing SSD drivet to Evo because then it won't run when I re-install.

Thank you for your suggestions .. and any more ideas gratefully recieved.

You can't boot from the hard drive because you don't have a system partition on it. The simple fix is to create a system partition on the hard drive to boot from.

NavyLCDR said:

You can't boot from the hard drive because you don't have a system partition on it. The simple fix is to create a system partition on the hard drive to boot from.

NavyLCDR, I don't understand. Is not that 'F' drive now a 'System partition'? It is a complete clone of the existing operating system partition on the C drive.

What I need to be able to do is to force my machine to boot from that partition rather than from the 'original' on the SSD (C drive in the attached jpeg).

What I am looking for is a way to force my machine to boot from the internal hard drive (F: on the attached graphic). In the old days it used to be a simple matter of setting the boot order in the BIOS. Now that route seems not to work. I have been chasing around in circles looking 'Advanced startup' in Settings, Update and Security; and trying to change the UEFI firmware settings .. but the clone of the Windows partition I have created is not listed. Also looked at 'msconfig' .. boot tab .. but that only lists my original Windows Operating system partition.

I need to know how I can get the machine to recognise that clone of the operating system on my F drive as the one I want to boot from.

entelecheia said:

DO NOT BUY AN EVO SSD for a laptop with a single SSD slot.

Why is this? I ask because that's exactly what I did and I'd prefer to make changes now than in the future?

Is there a consensus on what SSD drive is good for a single SSD slot?

Soapm said:

Why is this? I ask because that's exactly what I did and I'd prefer to make changes now than in the future?

Is there a consensus on what SSD drive is good for a single SSD slot?

I would say don't do it because of the problems I am experiencing in trying to migrate the Operating System on my current SSD to the new EVO SSD. Samsung clone utility does not recognise an EVO M.2 connected via a USB adaptor. Samsung make a big show on their website that migrating an OS to a new Evo M.2 SSD is easy ... but it seems you can only do this is the Evo is plugged directly into the motherboard. The EVO requires special drivers to operate .. and, by the way, those drivers won't install unless the Evo is already plugged into the motherboard.

So all in all a catch-22 sittuation.

My exchanges above are about trying to get around this problem .. but what a huge amount of effort for something that should be so easy :-(