Preparing to repair (but NOT the endless loop variety)

smartcooky · 12 Aug 2021

Megahertz said:

Did you run Diskpart - list disk as I asked to find out if your drives (HDD and SSD) are GPT?

Did you try to detach the Barracuda (SATA or power cable ) from the MB and try to boot?

Haven't been to work yet (its 1pm Friday here and I don't star until 3)

I will try both those when I get there (but I am pretty sure that the System Disk C: is GPT because that is what it says when I look at the drives in Macrium.

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OK so here are the results

If I unplug the D: drive, the computer boots up normally (no "Preparing to Repair" screen)

Shut down, plug it back in and start, and the problem appears again.

Diskpart List Disk results

NOTE:
Disk 1 is C: drive.... I've never seen this before, its usually Disk 0.
Disk 2 is a permanently attached 2TB USB HDD

However, this is what I believe might be the problem

The EFI System partition still exists on Disk 0, and I'm betting that its trying to use that to boot to the old system that used be in the 500GB section of Disk 0, not finding it, it briefly tries to repair the system then move on to the "repair screen".
If this is the case, is it possible to delete these? Right clicking either of them shows all the options greyed out except "help".

Megahertz · 13 Aug 2021

Disk Manager (C:\Windows\System32\diskmgmt.msc) don't show all partitions and space used isn't accurate.
Use Mini Tool Partition (free)
Two problems on disk 0:
- As you noticed, it still has the three system partitions (one is hidden)
- It is a dynamic disk to join two partitions in a single drive D: (Why did you do it?)

If you have space on drive 2, I would:
- Make a backup of all files and folders from D: and Google Drive (don't use partition image for D:)
- Delete all partitions on disk 0 and create new partitions
- Restore the backup

smartcooky · 13 Aug 2021

Megahertz said:

Disk Manager (C:\Windows\System32\diskmgmt.msc) don't show all partitions and space used isn't accurate.
Use Mini Tool Partition (free)
Two problems on disk 0:
- As you noticed, it still has the three system partitions (one is hidden)
- It is a dynamic disk to join two partitions in a single drive D: (Why did you do it?)

C and D drive were originally on the same physical disk (Disk 0). I made an image of C and restored it to a
new physical disk (Disk 1 - the SSD). The result was the the SSD came up as C (as expected), and then on Disk 0, the original C partition became D and the original D partition became E. I erased the original C partition and merged it with the D partitition to make a bigger data drive.

Megahertz said:

If you have space on drive 2, I would:
- Make a backup of all files and folders from D: and Google Drive (don't use partition image for D:)
- Delete all partitions on disk 0 and create new partitions
- Restore the backup

Thats the plan.

I actually already imaged D: drive and T: (Google Drive), but with Macrium Images, I can mount them as a drive letter and copy all my data folders and files with drag and drop.

Megahertz · 13 Aug 2021

smartcooky said:

C and D drive were originally on the same physical disk (Disk 0). I made an image of C and restored it to a new physical disk (Disk 1 - the SSD). The result was the the SSD came up as C (as expected), and then on Disk 0, the original C partition became D and the original D partition became E. I erased the original C partition and merged it with the D partition to make a bigger data drive.

When you want to merge a partition to another clean partition on the right, you delete the clean partition and then expand the partition to the unallocated space on the right.

smartcooky said:

I actually already imaged D: drive and T: (Google Drive), but with Macrium Images, I can mount them as a drive letter and copy all my data folders and files with drag and drop.

Good, so you're ready to do it

smartcooky · 15 Aug 2021

Its Saturday just after 8am here. I will be going in after 1pm when the staff have left so that I can work uninterrupted.

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OK, I've had a bit of a disaster.

I backed up the D: Data drive, then used diskpart to erase the whole drive. On restart, this happened

So, I tried the following

- Swapping the drive SATA ports (System to Sata 0, Data to Sata 1

- Changing SATA configuration in BIOS

- Running the boot disk and using bootrec (bootrec /fixboot)

None of this worked. and in the end, I was running out of time so I removed the Biostar SSD, and used Macrium Reflect to restore the original configuration - a single, Seagate 7200 1TB HDD partitioned into C: (System) and D: (Data) in order to get the computer up and running for Monday.

The puzzling thing I don't get is that, before I erased the Seagate HDD, if I just unplugged it, the SSD started up fine, but with the unformatted Seagate HDD plugged in, the SSD wont boot ????

What I will need to do is figure out how to clone this Win 10 installation from the one of the partitions on 1TB HDD to the 512GB SSD without having the boot information in the EFI partition pointing to the wrong place. In the old days of XP and Win 7, this would not have been a problem, and even it it was, it would have been a simple matter of editing the boot.ini file... but Win 10 doesn't have one of those. Apparently it now has a Boot Configuration Data (BCD) file that does a similar job, but it is in the EFI partition so inaccessible.

Megahertz · 15 Aug 2021

Are you sure you cleaned the HDD and not the SSD?
Please post a Disk Manager (C:\Windows\System32\diskmgmt.msc) image of all your drives. Please post a whole window image and expand the columns so we can read them.
How to Post a Screenshot of Disk Management

smartcooky · 15 Aug 2021

Megahertz said:

Are you sure you cleaned the HDD and not the SSD?
Please post a Disk Manager (C:\Windows\System32\diskmgmt.msc) image of all your drives. Please post a whole window image and expand the columns so we can read them.
How to Post a Screenshot of Disk Management

100% certain.

When I went to restore using Macrium reflect, it showed the 512 GB (SSD) in blue and as C: and the 1TB (HHD) as grey which means unallocated except for a 16MB partition on the left.

I no longer have the SSD installed so I cannot post a relevant Disk Management screenshot

I am now going to have to wait a couple of weeks until I get the opportunity to try again. This at least will give me a chance to learn what I need to do to get this done right.

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Here is the drive manager as it currently stands

Two things to note;
1. I reduced the size of the system drive C: so that I could make the data drive D: bigger
2. You will see that Drive 2 - the 2TB drive has no drive letter and is offline. Don't worry about that - its an archive disk that we offline deliberately (using Diskpart) so that staff don't accidentally eject it when ejecting USB sticks and devices and memory cards during the work day. They can online the disk for archiving and then offline it when they are done, using desktop shortcuts to batch files I created for the task.

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OK, so here is the draft plan. I welcome input as to whether this is the correct way to go about it, or any hints or ideas to add to this.

1. Back up the entire existing 1TB HDD and all partitions using Macrium Reflect.

2. Shut down computer and unplug the 1TB HDD.

3. Plug the SSD into SATA 0

4. Insert the USB boot disk with Windows 10 install

5. Start computer, boot into the USB, and fresh install Windows 10.

6. Shut down computer, then plug in the Macrium Reflect Recovery USB stick

7. Start computer and boot into Windows PE on the USB stick

8. From the Backup, restore ONLY the C: System partition (not the EFI partition and not 499MB partition) to overwrite the C: System partition on the SSD.
9. Shut down the computer

10. Plug the 1TB HDD into SATA 1

11. Start computer and it should boot into the recovered system on the SSD (I should be able to check this by verifying the drive sizes - the C: drive should be 500GB not 250 GB)

12. Erase the entire 1TB drive using Diskpart to select the correct disk and clean it

13. Restart computer and boot into Windows PE on the USB stick

14. Restore only the D: partition to the 1TB drive.

Megahertz · 16 Aug 2021

Windows Disk Manager isn't a good Disk Manager as it doesn't show all the partitions
As you have a UEFI-GPT drive, you can , make a HDD image and then restore only the partitions you want to the SSD (drag and drop) on this order:
1) EFI - 100M Fat32
2) Reserved - 16M raw
3) C: - NTFS
4) Recovery - 800M NTFS
5) D: - Data - NTFS
6) T: Google Drive - NTFS

Below is my Win 10 drive

Preparing to repair (but NOT the endless loop variety)-image.png

smartcooky · 16 Aug 2021

Megahertz said:

Windows Disk Manager isn't a good Disk Manager as it doesn't show all the partitions
As you have a UEFI-GPT drive, you can , make a HDD image and then restore only the partitions you want to the SSD (drag and drop) on this order:
1) EFI - 100M Fat32
2) Reserved - 16M raw
3) C: - NTFS
4) Recovery - 800M NTFS
5) D: - Data - NTFS
6) T: Google Drive - NTFS

I'm not understanding this

Firstly, AIUI, the BCD resides in the EFI partition, and it instructs the boot manager where to find the System. Currently, it points to the HDD system partition. Wouldn't restoring the EFI partition from the HDD onto the SSD result in the same problem I've been having where it tries to boot from the HDD System partition?

Secondly, I don't want to restore the HDD data partition onto the SSD. It wouldn't fit anyway. I want to keep the Data partition on the HDD, delete the old system partition and merge it with the data partition to make it available.

Megahertz · 16 Aug 2021

On an UEFI-GPT, BIOS transfer the boot sequence to the BIOS priority boot manager on a Fat32 Partition and then this boot manager transfer to a OS on a partition (same drive or even to a different drive). On the FAT32 partition you may have one or many boot manager (Linux and Windows etc). On the boot managers on the EFI partition the OS partition isn't identified by a letter (C:) but by a partition ID. This partition ID is created and assigned to the partition when you create it and although you cloned the partition it has a different ID on the target than on the source.
A boot repair will read the C: ID partition and correct it on the boot manger.

After you cloned the HDD
1) EFI - 100M Fat32
2) Reserved - 16M raw
3) C: - NTFS
4) Recovery - 800M NTFS
partitions on the SSD, detach the HDD (SATA or power cable).
Boot from the SSD, open Macrium Reflect and choose to fix the boot loader. It will read the C: ID partition and correct it on the boot manger.

If you still have the SSD that now doesn't boot, you can try to rebuild the EFI partition.
I can give you the instructions.