NVME Boot drive issues

[Kerrya]

A client brought in an M.2 NVME drive that was no longer booting. SMART was indicating a failing drive.

Using Acronis True Image I was able to clone the drive to a new NVME drive, however the new drive is still not bootable.

Can this drive be made bootable without loosing all the data on it?

Any advice appreciated.

Kerry

 

[Larry Sabo]

Have you tried Macrium Reflect's Fix boot issues?

 

[Markverhyden]

And did you make a backup of it before fiddling around?

 

[Kerrya]

And did you make a backup of it before fiddling around?

Isn't cloning the drive a backup?

 

[Kerrya]

I'm not familiar with this software, but checking it out now... thanks

Have you tried Macrium Reflect's Fix boot issues?

 

[Markverhyden]

Isn't cloning the drive a backup?

A backup is a backup if it has been verified working AND the original drive is working. If the patient has problems, as in this situation, you can never know when it's going to die so you want to touch it as little as possible. Thus make a clone and then a copy/clone of the clone. That way if one clone get hosed you can just make a copy of the other to continue.

 

[NviGate Systems]

By data are you refering to programs & settings?

Which version of Acronis are you using? If you have a Workstation License, there used to be an addon for Virtualization, it essentially would create an image, verify the image and automatically create a VM and adjust boot parameters so it would launch in the VM. That allowed me to fix many client systems that refused to boot once the drive was cloned or changed. Not always but many times it helped rule out certian issues.

If you are using the basic version of Acronis or even a licensed home version, that's part of the problem. The basic ones don't have the tools you need and technically (not saying you are using just saying) using for tech use is a violation of the EULA.

Also, you can try making an image (if the drive still shows up) and "Restore" from that. Many times a clone fails, and we don't really know why, but making an image and then restoring works wonders. Especially if there is a size difference between old and new drives.

 

[Diggs]

Windows 10 has a very lame Repair Windows Startup in their DVD repair function. Have you tried that? Have you aborted startup three times and tried going to Safe Mode? The boot repair option is there also. If all else fails you won't get your programs back but you can take the cloned copy of the drive, put it on another machine and run FABs to recover customer info. Install Windows fresh on the new drive and put the customer info back.