Cloned drive, but can't boot due to UEFI raid config from previous dri

oof - I really struggled with that title. This was actually a W11 installation, but what I'm asking should be version-agnostic.

So I had this laptop with a 1TB NVMe drive, fully booting and functional. The drive however, was a hybrid which had 32GB optane/1TB storage and the UEFI was configured to operate in RST raid mode. Me, not thinking and being in a rush, disregarded that fact and removed the drive, then cloned it to a replacement 2TB NVMe drive. When I booted, I was stuck in an auto repair loop. I entered the UEFI settings, and changed from RST to AHCI. Still the problem persists, so I'm wondering what my best option is from here.

Am I out of luck, and just have to do a clean installation on the new drive?

You must do like this tutorial to switch from raid to ahci.

Enable AHCI in Windows 8 and Windows 10 after Installation

edit: But you can't boot in safe mode so it won't work this tutorial.

I have no solution wait for other people.


If you still have the old disk, make an image/clone of it but first you change it to ahci mode by following the tutorial that I indicated.

itsme1 said:

You must do like this tutorial to switch from raid to ahci.

Enable AHCI in Windows 8 and Windows 10 after Installation

edit: But you can't boot in safe mode so it won't work this tutorial.

I have no solution wait for other people.


If you still have the old disk, make an image/clone of it but first you change it to ahci mode by following the tutorial that I indicated.

This is what I figured. I do still have the Macrium full disk image of the original drive, but since I've already messed with the UEFI RAID settings, the array is broken. womp womp. ty though! I just wanted someone to confirm my plight lol.

I think it is not possible without loading the REG-HIVE in an RecoveryEnvironment and changing the boot parameters to 0

survivalbloke said:

This is what I figured. I do still have the Macrium full disk image of the original drive, but since I've already messed with the UEFI RAID settings, the array is broken. womp womp. ty though! I just wanted someone to confirm my plight lol.

I don't use macrium, I use hasleo backup suite recently, but I know that macrium has the option to restore on different hardware, it's a kind of universal restoration like hasleo backup suite. According to this thread it is not necessary, you can try "(...)Finally running 'Fix Windows Boot Problems' from the Macrium recovery environment to get the transplanted system to boot. At no time was redeploy ever needed. "
Read this short thread: Macrium Free --Restore to totally different hardware --Working !!!

boot some kind of winpe to load the system hive and make the changes.

If you dosnt have a custom winpe, then installation media would be ok. Boot it up go to command prompt, type regedit then load the windows\system32\config system hive. give it any name e.g. SYS then make the changes and unload it