Laptop Boot Drive Swap Fails

[mubs]

I bought a cheap laptop in 2021. It came with a 256 GB NVME SSD and W10. I decided to replace the NVME with a 1 TB. I did a disk clone a couple of different ways, but laptop does not boot, saying there is no boot drive.

The Information page of the BIOS sees the new 1TB NVME. The boot screen does not. I give below the relevant entries in the different pages of the BIOS.

Information Page: Secure Boot Disabled

Security Page:
Administrator Password: Not set
User Password: Not set
HDD Password: Not set

Intel Platform Trust Technology: Enabled
Clear Intel PTT Key: <enter>

Device Guard: Disabled
Secure Boot: Disabled
Secure Boot Status: Disabled
Platform Mode: User Mode
Secure Boot Mode: Standard

Boot Page:
When the original NVME is in:
EFI: Windows Boot Manager (UMIS {name of original NVME} ...)

When the Clone is in:
EFI: blank

What am I missing? Thanks.

 

[sedrosken]

Are you cloning the entire drive or just the main Windows partition? You need to see a few-hundred-meg FAT32 partition on your drive labelled as an EFI System Partition for the UEFI firmware to figure out what it's supposed to be booting from. Can you post a screenshot of what your partition maps look like on each drive? What tools have you been using to do the clone? I personally still swear by the old free version of Macrium Reflect.

 

[mubs]

Are you cloning the entire drive or just the main Windows partition? You need to see a few-hundred-meg FAT32 partition on your drive labelled as an EFI System Partition for the UEFI firmware to figure out what it's supposed to be booting from. Can you post a screenshot of what your partition maps look like on each drive? What tools have you been using to do the clone? I personally still swear by the old free version of Macrium Reflect.

Cloned the entire drive. First time, I expanded the Windows partition on the destination drive during cloning. Didn't work. Second time cloned as is. Didn't work.

 

[sedrosken]

Maybe try setting up Windows on the new drive fresh, and then cloning the disk so that your firmware picks up that it's supposed to be looking for a bootloader on the new drive?

 

[Mercutio]

What tool(s) are you using to clone?

 

[mubs]

Sorry was out all day yesterday. On the laptop I have a paid version of AOMEI Partition Assistant. This low cost version does not allow creation of a USB bootable version, so it reboots into Windows PE and does the job. I guess I'll have to search for a free version of something that will clone the system disk. Most good ones only clone data disks, asking for money to clone system disks. Going to try Clonezilla.

 

[mubs]

Done.

Tried AOMEI Partition Assistant again, with the Copy OS option. I rebooted and tried to boot from the external NVME enclosure with the bigger NVME. It booted. But this option did not copy the Recovery Partition. So ditched this. Isn't it amazing that clone disk does not actually clone it? What a PoS.

I tried Clonezilla Portable. They don't use words like From/To or Source/Destination. Still I pressed ahead. Then it said some files were missing, probably because of version conflict. Gave up. Tried a couple of others; they were all bait and switch.

I have a Lifetime Upgrade paid version of Minitool Partition Wiz on my desktop PC. So removed the small OS NVME from the laptop, stuck it into a currently unused NVME slot in the desktop (soon to get a 2TB) inserted the USB NVME enclosure, fired up Minitool Partition Wiz and cloned it. Perfectly done. All partitions copied exactly. Took the external to the laptop and booted from it, worked fine.

I had purchased a 3mm high heatsink for the new NVME. The 1 TB SSD would run at 45C at idle. After sticking the thermal pad/heatsink on it, it runs at 35C. That's pretty impressive, I think.

Thanks guys. As I get old, my interest in these things is much lower and my patience wears really thin. This old dog has forgotten too many things.

ps: I don't know how to edit the title, or I would have done it. Sorry about that.

 

[mubs]

Is a thermal pad required between a heatsink and an M.2 NVME SSD? Doesn't make sense to me.
1. There is no flat, machined surface; only discrete chips with spaces between them
2. The chips are anyway covered with the manufacturer label. Who knows what it's made of.

 

[Mercutio]

Gen 4 and 5 m.2 drives probably do need at least some cooling but I don't know if it has to be a heat sink with pad. Most new motherboards have some kind of fancy, overdone cover for what's meant to be the fastest slot and it's not uncommon for me to want an fan on GPU and Infiniband HBA anyway so I figure it's getting cooled regardless.

 

[sedrosken]

The label does hurt thermal performance a tad, but in my experience with delabelling one to get better contact with the heatsink, it's not by enough to matter. the pad will fill in the minuscule air gaps between the SSD and the aluminum block (or copper pipe, or what-have-you) with something that's actually semi-competent at transferring heat. You don't strictly need to put heatsinks on them, as Merc said a lot of boards include one for the primary nvme slot these days, and that's usually plenty good enough.

Interestingly in the Precision 7750 I got off a friend the 4 (!) slots all come with pads and intermediary metal plates that contact the bottom metal cover for the machine to dissipate heat from the drives that way, that's the first time I've ever seen a laptop bother with cooling the NVMe drives at all, regardless of how effective or ineffective it ends up being.