Cloning vs Imaging boot drive upgrade

Merrlin said:

Hi everyone. I just received a Sabrent 1tb Rocket gen 4 nvme to replace my 500gb Samsung EVO ssd boot drive. Now I've done this once already when I replaced my sata hdd with the EVO and I think I cloned the boot drive, but I don't remember which software I used. I think it was Easus partition free, but I think it it has limited uses. Sabrent comes with free Acronis, but I haven't read good reviews of those who used it. My question is, if I create an image of the current drive, can accomplish the same thing using Windows recovery, and do I first need to create a simple volume and format in Windows or can I just install the NVME and let Windows do it from the recovery, then just extend the partition afterwards. Thank you.

You could do it either way. The manufacturer supplied software will be fine.

Never had a problem when cloning. After cloning and removing the source drive I recommend to boot from the Macrium Reflect or Win installation drive and do a boot repair to correct the partition ID.

Well this is not going well at all. I imaged the drive and it booted up right away and then blue screened in under a minute. PAGE_FAULT_IN_NONPAGED_AREA
What failed: IOMap64.sys

I can re-image my original if I remove the Nvme and the system is restores, but I can't boot from the Nvme no matter what I have tried for the last 4 hours.

Are you using the Windows tool or a third party?

You likely won't get too much assistance on this forum if you are using Windows own imaging as most have changed to other less problematic software.

I just did another restore and let windows format both drives. It restored to the original ssd and the Nvme is showing up in disk management. I will download and give the macrium a shot at this.

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Do I want the PE components or just the installer?

Merrlin said:

I can re-image my original if I remove the Nvme and the system is restores, but I can't boot from the Nvme no matter what I have tried for the last 4 hours.

Some old MB don't boot from M.2 slot. Some requires to have EFI-GPT.

We have no idea of your hardware. Please edit your profile with ALL your hardware specs. It will help us to help you.

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Is your main drive a Legacy - MBR or a EFI-GPT?

Please take a snapshot of Disk Manager.
How to Post a Screenshot of Disk Management

Merrlin said:

I just did another restore and let windows format both drives. It restored to the original ssd and the Nvme is showing up in disk management.

Is there a reason you didn't restore it to the nvme disk?

I can't boot from the Nvme no matter what I have tried for the last 4 hours.

Does your bios support nvme boot? Presumably it does as you have bought a pcie4 nvme.

A huge thank you to everyone who helped. After starting the clone with Macrium and getting some sleep from a long night shift and 7 hours of frustation, when I woke up and rebooted, problem solved. Could they make those screws any smaller? I lost a stand off in my power supply. Anyways, you all kept me going and now I'm rather pleased with my new drive.