Dell pc, windows recovery image and restore issues

hi

I'm wondering if somebody can help me out. I bought an Dell I3050 mini pc. It came with 32gb m.2 ssd with 20gb free space. I decided to upgrade to a bigger 128gb m.2 ssd and I'm trying to migrate to it from small one. I downloaded dell's windows recovery image and used dell's usb tools to create a bootable ssd and their instruction says to boot from usb under UEFI and use troubleshooting --> restore from drive feature. Everything looks normal and recovery finishes fine, but it doesn't want boot from newly created system partition. If I use normal windows 10 USB and get to diskpart, I can see partitions(system, Windows RE, etc...) created. But I can't boot into windows at all.

I was be able to install windows on this new ssd just using windows 10 usb I created using MS Windows USB tool. The problem is I had to trick the system by changing bios to ata from ahci and use legacy mode instead of UEFI. After install I used the registry trick to switch from ata to ahci, but I'm was still on legacy mode. I would prefer to have it setup using UEFI

Also, I think dell uses a compact version of windows so it can fit into 32 gb ssd.

So here are couple of questions
1. Should I try to get it working with dell's windows recovery image? If yes, how can I make it boot? btw in diskpart I can see that disk is gpt.
2. Should I just stick with MBR in legacy mode with install from MS USB image?
3. Should I care about dell's compact version( it would be nice to save some storage)? I don't know if there is a performance degradation with compact version.

Thanks

Welcome to the forum. I am not clear how you have done this is you clone the old drive to the new one it should work straight off use free Macrium Reflect Free
UEFI puts an extra parition on the drive you need there are lots of videos to help if your not sure what to do How to Clone Windows With Macrium Reflect Free - YouTube

Took old one out and put new one in. Then downloaded dell windows recovery image and used their USB tools software to make a bootable usb drive. Followed their instruction. Both drives are m.2 so I don't have an enclosure for 3nd ssd. In theory it should work. I'm not really a newbie, but ...
Using the USB Recovery Media to Install Microsoft Windows

Installing Microsoft Windows 10
1. Connect the USB recovery media that you created to the Dell PC where you want to install Microsoft Windows 10.
2. Restart the PC and when the Dell logo appears, tap F12 key until you see ‘Preparing one time boot menu’ in the top-right corner of the screen.
3. On the boot menu, under UEFI boot, select your USB drive and press Enter.
4. Select the language and keyboard layout.
5. On the Choose an option screen, click Troubleshoot, and then click Recover from a drive.
6. Follow the on-screen instructions to finish installing Microsoft Windows. The installation process will take some time and your PC may restart several times.

If you clone it you will have all your files apps etc

I don't really care. It had 32gb ssd with windows on it.

Here is another thing. I don't get it is to why I can't even install pure windows 10 in EUFI mode. It copies the files and restarts, but gets stuck on dell logo. All partitions are created when checked with diskpart. One thing I see is when I hit F12 is a new "Boot manager" shows up. It feels like system partition does not get attribute set properly to boot up.

Any other ideas? I should be able to install windows from scratch with USB drive under UEFI mode. Right?

I'm hoping it's not something dell did in the bios.

btw I whs2011 and I can't restore backup I made from 32gb into new 128gb ssd. I have never had this kind of issues with WHS2011 not be able to restore image on replaced hardware.

I don't have enclosure for m.2 2260 ssd. Some other people tried it with cloning software( i believe it was Marcrium) in this I3050 mini pc and it didn't work in UEFI mode.

One of my question was if I should care about dell's compact version of windows 10. Should I?
I have researched it more and it looks like it comes down to How to repair the EFI bootloader on a GPT HDD for Windows 7, 8, 8.1 and 10 on your Dell PC | Dell US EFI bootloader on a GPT HDD, but I seems can't make it to work.

Should I just install it in ahci MBR legacy mode?

Thanks

Kyhi said:

Set your BIOS to the Defaults.....
Set your USB Stick as "Active" using diskpart...
Select USB Stick as UEFI Boot Device

What will this give me?