Cloned Windows to SSD, but not booting?

OpFor

Reputable
Aug 27, 2014
21
0
4,520
Hi guys,

I have a 256 GB Transcend MTS600 M.2 NGFF SSD. Along with this, I'm using a USB 3.0 SSD enclosure from MyDigitalSSD to allow me to swap things out and have a portable drive (and because my laptop doesn't have a port for SSDs, despite being relatively new and expensive).

I managed to clone Windows 8.1 to the SSD with MiniTool Partition Manager. Worked great.

In order to get the USB adapter to be recognized by the BIOS boot manager, I had to disable UEFI/enable legacy support, no problem. Now that I can get the device recognized, I'm good to go, right? Nope. When I select the device, all I get is a black screen with a flashing underscore (basically a non-usable terminal screen).

What have I done wrong? Do I need to wipe my other drive, disable it, what...? I simply do not understand why this does not work. The SSD is formatted as a primary drive in NTFS (MBR), and the HDD is formatted in NTFS as a primary drive as well (GPT).

Computer is an HP Envy 17t-k000 laptop with an i7 4510U, GTX 850, and a Hitachi 1 TB hard drive.

Thanks.
 
Solution
OK, I'm still not quite sure what you're looking to do here.

You have an HDD, optical drive, and a new 256GB M.2 SSD.

What do you want the end state to be? The OS on the SSD?
Does your machine have an M.2 port?
If so, can it boot from that?

OpFor

Reputable
Aug 27, 2014
21
0
4,520

It doesn't have an internal slot AFAIK (tried removing optical drive, nothing, not sure about HDD, but probably not), therefore, I need to be able to boot from the USB, unfortunately. Is there really any easy way to do this, or would I really just be better off installing a clean copy with Windows PE, or something else?
 

OpFor

Reputable
Aug 27, 2014
21
0
4,520
It might also be worth it for me to mention that I did not format this drive before cloning my 8.1 installation to it. I've never had to do anything like this before, so excuse my noobiness, but is it necessary?
 

USAFRet

Titan
Moderator
OK, I'm still not quite sure what you're looking to do here.

You have an HDD, optical drive, and a new 256GB M.2 SSD.

What do you want the end state to be? The OS on the SSD?
Does your machine have an M.2 port?
If so, can it boot from that?
 
Solution

pwnchubr

Honorable
Dec 23, 2013
4
0
10,510


Can you please tell me what you did to remedy your problems? I am having similar problems and it's driving me nuts. Thank you.
 

USAFRet

Titan
Moderator


Please create a new post with your specific issue.

Thanks.
 

pwnchubr

Honorable
Dec 23, 2013
4
0
10,510


It's the same, that's why I asked here.

 

USAFRet

Titan
Moderator


Well...the OP may not be back. He hasn't posted anything since this.