I wanted to post this in case anyone else runs into this.

I used Macrium v6 for the first time to clone a 64GB SSD for the purpose of replacing the drive with a larger SSD. The clone was successful (took 2.14 minutes).

When I looked at the clone drive in Windows Disk Manager (i.e. open File Explorer, right-click on "Computer" or "This PC" depending on OS, then select "Manage". Go to "Storage > Disk Manager"), the clone looks identical both the existing C: drive and cloned E: drive showed the primary partition as Active except the "E:" drive and does not show "Boot, Page File, Crash Dump" in the primary partition like the original drive does. I was wondering if something didn't clone properly so I decided to try to boot of the cloned drive.

I booted up using F11 to select the boot drive, and I selected the new drive E: (a Samsung 850 Pro SSD). But it did not boot. All I got was a blinking white dash on a black screen. I restarted but this time went into BIOS (UEFI) and set the new E: drive as first boot device, checked all the settings and restarted. No good. Still won't boot.

So to further test, this time I removed the current C: drive and installed the clone E: drive (plugging in to same SATA port that C: was using. This time when I rebooted and the computer started up. No problems. When I looked at the clone drive in Drive Manager, it was now "C:" drive and had the "Boot, Page File, and Crash Dump" showing on the primary partition. Everything working as it should. I'm sure I could have just left the clone dive plugged into the SATA port where I started - and just unplugged the C: drive and would have been fine.

So for anyone else testing their Clone, you can't boot from a clone when you already have a valid boot drive installed.

Regards, Richard V. ("Arvy")

Thanks for correcting my post.
I did not try to run the repair tool - as I wasn't sure that I had a problem (which is why I did some testing).
I did rearrange boot order in UEFI BIOS when F key boot selection failed.

The question I have - is did you look at the cloned drive with Windows Disk Manager? I wonder if your clone had "Boot, Page File, and Crash Dump" showing in the Active primary NTFS partition on the Clone. Should it - or does that only show when the disk IS the active boot disk?

"Boot, Page File, and Crash Dump" is only shown for the disk that has booted and loaded Windows. 

Kind Regards

Nick

Macrium Support

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Just to elaborate slightly on Nick's response, it is necessary to distinguish between the drive partition where the currently running operating system is located, on the one hand, and the active drive partition that (depending on the boot order set in the machine's UEFI/BIOS) is discovered and used to load that operating system, on the other hand.  They may or may not be the same.

For my own system set-up where I've made each drive to be bootable completely independent of all others, they usually (but not always) are the same, but that need not be the case.  It is perfectly possible and quite "normal" for any system to use a boot manager and BCD store that is located on one drive partition for booting an operating system that is located on an entirely different drive partition.  In such a case, as Nick has explained, the "Boot, Page File and Crash Dump" partition won't necessarily be the same as the "System" partition shown by Windows Disk Management.  That's why the BCD store's "pointers" for the ApplicationDevice and OSDevice are highly critical factors in the system start-up process.  And that is also one of the things where Reflect's "Fix Windows Boot Problems" utility can often correct any errors that may arise.

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P.S.:  It's also possible to use BCDedit or a visual BCD editor to check existing entries and even to make changes manually, but the latter is not an exercise that I could recommend in good conscience for casual experimentation.


Regards, Richard V. ("Arvy")

Sorry starting own thread

Hello All,

In my opinion, It is always prudent to Shut Down and Remove the Original or Cloned Drive immediately after a cloning process.
Yes, I know, you "Can" boot a system with 2 identical system drives BUT there are times when windows becomes confused because the "Cloned" drive carries the same ID as the "Original" and yes, there are occasions where due to having 2 identical systems drives installed at boot time that one or both drives are corrupted and neither may boot.

Just my opinion, because it happened to me because I did not adhere to my own warnings !