Cloned Win 7 Pro to SSD, upgraded to Win 10 Pro, SSD won't boot without DVD (AsRock X58 Extreme3)

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badcrc

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Aug 28, 2015
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I had Windows 7 Pro on a WD Black 1.5tb HD and cloned that drive using EaseUS Todo Backup to a Samsung evo 500gb SSD. I've used Todo Backup to clone drives to SSD before and didn't have an issue. My system kept booting to the old drive after the clone, so I unplugged everything except the SSD and it still wouldn't boot. I did a startup repair on my Windows 7 DVD and suddenly the SSD booted perfectly. I didn't realize it at the time, but it only booted because the DVD was in the drive, not because it repaired anything. Soon as I got into Windows it was ready to upgrade to Windows 10. Thinking everything was running fine, I upgraded and took out the Win7 dvd from the drive. Upon reboot, the SSD wouldn't boot again, and now my Win7 dvd obviously couldn't repair Win10, so I burned the Microsoft Win10 ISO to dvd and did a startup repair again and I was back in action again with Win10....or so I thought, until I took the dvd out and realized I could only boot with the dvd in the drive.

The Windows disk manager shows a 128mb partition on my 3tb storage drive (along with two other very small partitions) so I thought when I installed Win7 originally it must have put the system partition on the wrong drive and now Win10 was using it. So I made a new partition with MiniTool Partition Wizard on the SSD and cloned the 128mb partition to it...still wouldn't boot, even after rebuilding the boot manager and mbr and trying auto repair 10 times. Long story short, I determined that partition must not be used anymore because if I only connect the WD Black Win 7 drive and nothing else, it boots into Win 7 fine without a dvd or anything, so the boot manager and all system files it's using have to be on the main partition. Which makes me wonder why Win10 won't boot on the SSD after cloning since everything is on the same partition. I removed that partition and put the SSD back to the way it was, and I can still boot with it as long as the Win10 dvd is in the drive. Startup Repair on the dvd fails every time.

So now I'm kind of screwed here with my SSD upgraded to Win10 Pro and my old WD Black with Win7 Pro. I can't install Win10 fresh on my SSD since it's an upgrade, and if I can't install fresh I'd sure like to just get the SSD booting on its own. Before I go through the mess of installing Win7 fresh on the SSD, then upgrading to Win10 a second time, then installing and configuring all my stuff again, I'm hoping someone here can tell me what I'm missing to get the SSD booting. The bios is set to AHCI.
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UPDATE:
I just noticed at the bottom of c:\windows\system32\logfiles\srt\SrtTrail.txt (startup repair log) it has this:

Root cause found:
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The operating system version is incompatible with Startup Repair
 
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badcrc

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Aug 28, 2015
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Well I decided to go back to Windows 7 Pro, so I cloned my old 1.5gb WD black to my Samsung EVO 500g. I've tried Partition Master, EaseUS todo backup, Acronis Trueimage, MiniTool Partition Wizard. All of them result in a Samsung EVO SSD that's only bootable if my Windows 7 dvd is in the drive. No matter what I repair doesn't seem to fix that. I've done the startup repair off the dvd 3x, i've tried bcdedit /bootfix, bcdedit /mbr, bcdedit /rebuildbcd, I ran easybcd and deleted the boot config and re-created it and that wouldn't boot, so I did startup repair 3x again, still wouldn't boot. No matter what I try doesn't seem to make this thing bootable. Strange thing is startup repair says "no problems detected" now every time, but bootsect /scanos says 0 windows installations identified.
 

badcrc

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Aug 28, 2015
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Narrowing down this issue. To rule out any cloning issues, I did a fresh Win7 install to the SSD. That also wouldn't boot without the Windows DVD in the drive. My WD black boots fine on the same controller so clearly there's some kind of incompatibility with the X58 and this (or all) SSD. I found a thread on Anandtech where the OP said his ssd would only boot on a SATA2 port on the X58. I updated the bios during this process just in case it fixed something, and found it interesting the P2.60 bios had an option "SSD performance mode" and the P2.80 bios I updated to doesn't. I emailed Asrock about the issue but I doubt I'll get back anything worthwhile, if any response at all. I'll try the drive on a Sata2 port tomorrow and see if it works. Is it worth using on a sata2 port?
 

orlbuckeye

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You can do a clean install on the SSD. When you do the upgrade Windows 10 get activated. This new process was added to make it easy to do clean installs.
 
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