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Partition cloning of old to new laptop will not boot

soholmsoholm
in Storage General Discussion
Using AOMEI Backupper 6.1 I created a (partition) clone of the c: partition on my friends HP laptop (Win10) to an external USB disk (NTFS). 
Subsequently, I ran the AOMEI Backuppers partition clone from the new HP laptops c: drive, which seemed to work. Naturally, the tool had to reboot itself to finalize overwriting it´s own c: partition with the clone partition. The data was moved sucesfully. But now my problems started.

The new c: drive wouldn´t boot.

I´m not really an experienced Windows-guy, so my knowledge og the BIOS, EFI, UEFI is really superficial, so I have studied a lot of videos and tutorials over the weekend trying to understand all this.

I have a suspicion that the problem has to do with the clone missing some boot info. 

I managed to install new clean Windows 10 (not HPs) on the new c: drive (thereby overwriting the cloned data), and I got the machine to startup again.

To test my theory, I created an extra copy of my new fresh C: partition to a new F: partion on the external USB-drive. 
I then tried to run this command as administrator in the terminal: bcdboot F:\windows

I succeseeded in getting the drive registered in UEFI, as far as I could tell when looking into the BIOS startup environment, but when choosing to boot from it it failed. 

So I´m pretty much stuck. I only know that there is something that I don´t know enough about here. 

Any ideas how I should proceed? 


Comments

  • soholmsoholm
    Correction: I did actually use the Partition Clone Wizard in the AOMEI Partition Assistant tool to create the last test partion on drive F. 
  • MrPresidentMrPresident
    Do you have done system backup? If not, the disk will of course not boot....
  • soholmsoholm
    @MrPresident: I am not sure what exactly you mean by "done system backup". 
    I have cloned the full C-drive on which the all the system files resided (to the best of my knowledge).
    I am aware of another tool than "Partition Clone" that will make a system backup, but I am interested in getting the exact partition moved so that it will continue to work as before (including being able to boot). Are you suggesting that I should be able to clone the c partition with some other tool instead? 
  • vbbrittvbbritt
    With Aoemi Backupper there are two options that will backup your system and provide you with a bootable system when restored.  They are "System Backup" and "Disk Backup".  Anything else and you may have a backup but it is anyone's guess if it will be bootable or not.  With the "System Backup" selection Aomei Backupper will identify and include all of the partitions necessary to have a viable system.  For example: a viable UEFI system will have a small unlabeled EFI system partition roughly 100MB, your main drive C partition, and a small System Recovery partition (roughly 500MB) at a minimum.  The "System Backup" will automatically determine which partitions to include so all you have to do is tell Backupper what the destination location is to store the Backup Image.  With "Disk Backup" you have to manually instruct Aomei  Backupper" as to which partitions need to be included in the backup.  So if your main drive was split in half where you had your programs on drive C and your data files on drive D then you would instruct Backupper to include the EFI System Partition, Main Drive C partition, System Recovery Partition, and Drive D Partition.  Then like the System Backup you would instruct Backupper which destination to use to store the Backup Image.  Both the "System Backup" and "Disk Backup" will make an exact image of all files, all configuration settings, all serial numbers, exactly as it exists at this specific point in time.  

    If as you say that you used the partition backup option then you will have a copy of that one partition and nothing else.  You should have received a warning when you chose that option (At least in version 6.1 you get the warning) that there were no guarantees that your machine would boot using that option.

    So based upon what you are saying in your reply to @MrPresident you should only choose the "System Backup" or "Disk Backup" for the task you are wanting to do. 

    The creation of the rescue media and the type of rescue media is just as important as the backup if you want to successfully restore your system and be able to boot up the machine when you are finished.  First you have to find out what boot mode your machine is configured for.  Go to a command prompt and type in MSINFO32 and press enter.  Look down the list of items for one labeled as Bios Mode.  If the mode is set to UEFI then you want to create a WinPE UEFI rescue media.  If the mode is set to BIOS or LEGACY then you want to select the WinPE Legacy rescue media.  If your system bios is configured for compatibility (CSM support) then even though the system information says UEFI it is really LEGACY.  One last point and one of the most important!  Always create the rescue media on the machine you are interested in.  One of the steps in the media creation process is to load the drivers for that unique machine onto the rescue media.  If you use a rescue media that was created on some other machine there is a good chance that your machine won't boot properly because some critical drivers may be missing from your rescue media.  I once used a rescue media that was created on a machine that contained a AMD chipset and Ryzen processor on a machine with a INTEL chipset and processor.  The machine would not boot and I was left staring at a black screen with a blinking line for the curser.  So to be safe always create your rescue media well before you need it and from each unique machine that you have.  Hopefully this answers your questions.  
  • MrPresidentMrPresident
    @soholm: No, that was not my suggestion. AOMEI software (Backupper & Partition Manager) seems to be a really reliable suite. I wouldn't be in this forum if I weren't convinced by AOMEI.

    You only have to change the task name and the target path. At least check the 3 options below if you want and you can start saving your system partition. I prefer "System Backup" instead of "Disk Backup".
  • soholmsoholm
    @Vbbritt Thanx a million for that thorough answer. You touch on a number of the questions that I'm struggling to grasp here. I have watch a bunch of videos and read a lot of tutorials and documentations, but there's always this some conditions that are taken for granted or some sordid details that is not mentioned. I'm grateful that you try to cover all the open questions. I'll revisit your post when I have time to dig into the matter again in a short while.
    Coming from a Mac/Linux-world I'm used to being able to boot from almost any external drive, but this BIOS issue can be a hurdle. 

    I did actually have a suspicion about the different drivers and BIOS settings when I set off. And that was the reason why I only wanted to copy/clone the c-drive to begin with. This was in order to not screw up the existing EFI and recovery data on the receiving HP laptop. I intuitively thought that putting a old configuration including EFI and recovery partitions from a 3-4 year older HP laptop HDD onto a new HP laptop with SSD might not turn out well. But I guess that's what I better have to do now by making a clone or backup of the whole disk.

    I'll be back. Hopefully with good news. :-) Thanks again.
  • soholmsoholm
    @MrPresident Thanx for trying to put me on the right track. (I'm sorry, if I wasn't clear about the "partition cloning tool". I was refering to some of the many different tools inside the AOMEI Backupper or the various AOMEI supporting mini applications.) I will give it another go. :-)
  • adminadmin
    @Soholm, Based on your purpose, we suggest that you can use AOMEI Backupper to create a system backup on the old laptop. So, it will back up the system partitions. You can save the backup image to the external drive.
    After that, you can try to boot the new laptop from the WinPE USB created by AOMEI PE Builder, and connect the external drive to the new laptop, then universal restore the system backup image to the disk of new laptop.
    In addition, before restore, we suggest that you can run Partition Assistant under WinPE to delete the original system partitions of new laptop.
    You can download AOMEI PE Builder from here:
    http://www2.aomeisoftware.com/download/pe/2.0/full/PEBuilder.exe
    It will integrate AOMEI Backupper and Partition Assistant you installed.
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