Having big problems imaging windows 10 to a larger disk

Does he want a picture
Well maybe this gets close to the crux of the matter. Perhaps I need to get the cloned copy booting as per the technique outlined in the OP and then clone that from the 850 to the 860. I can make an image of the win7 and store that on the 970 to make that possible. If that works then it may show that there are some problems.

Installing the BIBM is delayed for a bit as the check called for a chkdsk on the 970, disk is flagged as dirty ...

 

That's OK. My MBR test computer just turned itself off and I can't start it. It looks like a Power Supply failure. I'll get another computer set up but it won't be until tomorrow. It's approaching 2000 here.

What I was planning, as a test, was to resize Win10 to 400 MiB and create a copy. It will be a dual boot on the 1 TB M.2. Neither OS will see the other and you will get a good workout with BIBM multi-booting. It will be easy to get rid of the second Win10 if you don't want it.

 

Creating the partition with Bootit took a lot longer at the 2 checking stages compared to the ssd, but it's done.

No problem about doing this later , I really do appreciate the time you have spent on this. I have been up all night here so I will hit the sack anyway.

In the meantime the thoughts I am having is to do the test of just a clone from the one SSD to the other. If that proves successful then it has something to do with the nvme and that being the case perhaps I ought to convert to GPT and then see if that works.

I am presuming that if I did convert the nvme to gpt I can still boot from a normal ssd with mbr given the bios has CSM and seems to support UEFI and legacy at the same time?

With regards to your idea.. actually when I bought the 1TB the idea was to have this in 2 partitions and be able to store 2 clones .. one for win7 and the other for win 10 and I could then use the 500mb as storage but I found that the simple cloning Migration software wouldn't do this and I'd have to look at some other software and that's when I ran into this gem of a problem.

anyway thank you again and have a good evening ...

 

I wondered when you slept.

You can't boot from a GPT disk in MBR system. Bad idea. Otherwise I assume you would like your computer to be MBR rather than UEFI. That's ok. How old is your computer. If it's older than 3 years, keep it as MBR. UEFI firmware older than 3 years can be unstable when using BootIt for UEFI.

Your 1TB M.2 is large enough for several Win10 and a Win7. I prefer having the OS on the fastest drive.

I have M.2 drives in two UEFI computers but have never tried them in MBR computers. I have 25 OS on a 1 TB M.2. Four Windows and the rest Linux and WinPE.

 

This is where I get confused regarding UEFI and MBR. An MBR system is surely just the way the disks are configured? The bios I have is UEFI - high end and bought in late 2016.
Asus X99-Deluxe 2.

In the boot options has the CSM - which is enabled and the other options keep everything at legacy that isn't a hard disk and those can be configured as either auto or UEFI and legacy.
I presumed that it would therefore boot quite happily from a GPT disk and handle MBR storage. Booting from MBR would then be a case of either letting it figure it out or setting the bios to boot in legacy or Bios mode.

I am confused though but then after reading around a little after your comment about the NVME and MBR there are a few articles that suggest that GPT would be the way to boot from an NVME.
I bought the NVME since the speed difference is well worth it. However, I'm not one of those people that like to reload their o/s every year or so - I hate that. The system am using now has been up and running pretty much since 2010 and I couldn't bear the amount of work it would take to get all my stuff together and back to normal hence - I need a really solid and quick way to restore from a reliable image.

If it's valid to keep MBR I'm fine with it but if having and using an NVME in MBR is going to cause the problems where I cannot make the backup because of it I would have to consider swapping over.

Something still bother me eg. When I get the "inaccessible boot device" it's supposed to go into recovery but never does.

I've not put drives in this computer it's basically sat unbuilt since 2016 for a few reasons and so everything is new and if necessary I can convert all disks to GPT or just leave them MBR.

The alternative is that I just clone the o/s and then repair the boot as I have been doing. It's reasonably reliable and will ensure that I can get back up and running with a repair disk and a few extra minutes.

Sleep .. hmm yes well when I get a bee in me bonnet I tend to keep cracking at it much to my detriment and I do tend to want to find out the WHY and understand the issues

.. now I'm definitely going to bed...

 

UEFI and MBR boot can be done but is definitely not recommended. Hybrid boot. Your computer should be fine with UEFI or MBR. Our tests will tell you if MBR is suitable with your M.2. Stay with MBR until we've finished testing.

BIBM is installed so boot BIBM and click Settings. Make sure there is no tick in Limit Primaries. It might even be greyed out. That's fine. Click OK.

Partition Work, select the Win10 partition, click Properties, in Additional Information Fast Start should be disabled. If it isn't click Disable. This prevents file corruption.

https://www.terabyteunlimited.com/ucf/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=427

So we can communicate easier I'd like you to change your partition labels. You can change them back later. In Partition Work, select MBR0, click Properties and change the name to SRP-1. Click OK. In Partition Work, select Win10, click Properties and change the name to W10-1. Click OK. In Boot Edit, select the Win10 entry, click Edit and change the Identity to Win10-1. , OK, OK again.

Partition Work, select W10-1 and click Resize, OK. In the New Size field, make it 200000. Type it in. Your Used Space is 80 GB so 200000 MiB is fine. Click OK. Continue. Close. This could be very slow. Just wait for the sectors in use to be moved. Now you have a huge area of Free Space following W10-1. This will be used for a copy of W10-1 and Win8.

Partition Work, select SRP-1, click Copy, select the Free Space, click Paste. In Name field type SRP-2, leave the tick in Data Only and don't change the Location numbers, click OK. You will see Copy in progress. Click Close when the copy completes.

Partition Work, select W10-1, click Copy, select the Free Space, click Paste. In Name field type W10-2, leave the tick in Data Only and don't change the Location numbers, click OK. You will see Copy in progress. Click Close when the copy completes.

Let me know when you have completed the above. I'll be out for a few hours.

 

Ok thanks Brian,

It's been a long day and I'd like to continue tomorrow if that's ok, 2 nights up in a row will probably kill me
I will complete the tasks before and let you know when it's been done.

Btw just to be clear my idea was not a hybrid boot but all boot disks would be gpt with some hdds (storage only) mbr. However, come to think of it 2 drives going into this eventually are 4TB WD black and 6TB WD and I believe they are already GPT .. I'd have to check on that. 2 smaller drives may go in as MBR. Is that still bad?

 

That's OK. You can have GPT and MBR disks but your OS disks must be MBR.

 

Having real problems understanding this ..
What I need to know at this point is if :

1) All o/s boot disks are GPT (ie. that is not hybrid boot IMO only one type of boot)
2) some HDDs may be MBR none of them will ever be a boot drive.
3) Bios is in CSM mode which appears to happily deal with both systems.

But when you say "hybrid boot" perhaps the boot part is not what I am assuming and that you just mean hybrid system?.

The alternative is convert all HDDs to GPT and that will make it UEFI throughout.

Definitely retiring now as it's getting too late now. Speak tomorrow hopefully

 

Any disk with a bootable OS, Win7, 8 or 10, will have to be a MBR disk. Any other disk (non boot) can be MBR or GPT. Your choice.

At present your BIOS is set to Legacy, CSM and Secure Boot off. Correct.

In UEFI boot mode it's better to have CSM disabled. It makes the system more stable. Motherboards manufactured from this year onwards are supposed to have CSM permanently disabled. That is, the motherboard will not support Legacy boot. UEFI only.

 

Ok understood - makes me wonder how much trouble I'll have when I upgrade next. Intention to transfer windows 10 to the new computer if possible.

By the time you read this it should be done. It's moving the w10 partition as I write this .. painfully slowly for some reason.

As per instruction there is now a mirror of each partition .. so apart from the Bootit partition this is what I see:

SRP-1 - 500 MiB
WIN10-1 - 200000 MiB
SRP-2 - 500 MiB
WIN10-2 - 200000 MiB

 

Great.

Now to create a second Boot Item. Still have the M.2 as the only drive.

Boot Edit
select Win10-1, Edit
on the right side in MBR Details remove BOOTIT EMBRM by selecting it and clicking Clear. (It doesn't need to be in the partition table). Any partitions Cleared from the MBR partition table will be stored in the EMBR. They aren't deleted and can be reused.
click OK

Still in Boot Edit, click Add
Identity... Win10-2 (type it in)
HD 0
Boot.. SRP-2
In MBR Details, HD 0 on the right side
click 0) slot, click Fill, select SRP-2
click 1) slot, click Fill, select W10-2

OK, OK again

click Reboot and when back into BIBM
select Win10-2 and click Boot

In booted Win10-2 have a look at Disk Management.
You should only see one drive letter. C: drive and it should be for Win10-2. SRP-2 should not have a drive letter.

Restart and boot Win10-1. Check Disk Management.

All OK?

We'll do Win7 next.

 

Just worth noting here that although the partition is called Win10-1 Bootit recognises the top hierachy or disk as Window10 (that wasn't my doing it's that up. I selected it of course as it's the only option.

This doesn't boot - I get a bluescreen but at least, unlike the "Inaccessible boot device", I get the Recovery screen with F8.
This may be a case therefore of just going into safe mode, then rebooting again..... watch this space ....

EDIT: Nope hitting F8 doesn't do anything - screen flashes and goes to the same screen. This may have something to do with my attempt to install the missing recovery environment not sure as I did test it via the windows advance reboot method.

Either way this isn't booting stop coded and info:
File:\windows\system32\winload.exe

Error code: 0Xc0000225

EDIT 1:

Ok booted Win10-1 and what doesn't look right here is that I have 3 partitions according to disk manager

SRP-1 - 500MiB
Win10-1 - 195.31 GiB
and the 3rd partitions is
Unallocated - 269/95 GiB

 

I think that is good news. It's a BCD error. I don't get that error copying the partitions the way we discussed but I do get that error with IFD if I don't select Update Boot Partition.

OK, do a BCD Edit on SRP-2

 

Ok you were too fast .. I added another edit regarding what I see. Can you check that to see if that's ok or not.

Doing a BDC edit choosing the first Windows 10 entry or the added win10-2 entry at the start?

.. ah of course I can't boot into bootit now without the usb. BCDedit via recovery disk?

 

The BCD Edit referencing SRP-2 and Win10-2

 

All OK. The 3rd partition isn't a "partition". It's Unallocated Space. With EMBR disks there might be partitions in that Unallocated Space but you can't see them as they aren't in the partition table.

 

Yeah sorry got a little confused there I'm on that now ...

 

Great ! That did the trick and yes we definitely booted from the second instance.
I'm going to have trouble remember all this stuff in the future you know

 

That is great. So both Win10 are doing what they should do. Booting and Disk Management?

 

I prefer having all my OS on the M.2 as it's the fastest drive. I do backup images to internal SSDs as it's faster than imaging to external HDs. Faster restores too.

 

Yes both boot up.

This certainly shows for the first time that a copy has finally worked however, I have to admit I don't know what is different.

However, in the end I don't want a boot manager or this method - I simply want to make images of the os drive that I can restore as and when I need so they will defintely be kept either on my NAS drive or on a handy spare SSD.

So given the method that has worked is this the only way I'm going to be able to get a working copy backup and I'm really curious about why the other imaging software isn't working including IFW.

 

I had already typed this, so if you don't mind....

Now for Win7
Install the Win7 drive
Boot BIBM
The Win7 drive might now be Drive 0 in BIBM. It doesn't matter if it is.

In Partition Work, select the Win7 drive. Just below the Drives line you will see if it is EMBR Partitions or MBR Partitions. We want EMBR partitions so if it is MBR click Change Disk Type (at the top). Click EMBR, Yes. Now you should see EMBR Partitions. This lets you Clear partitions from the Partition Table.

Partition Work, select the Win7 drive, select the 100 MiB partition, click Copy, change to the M.2 drive, select the Free Space, click Paste. In Name field type SRP-3, leave the tick in Data Only and don't change the Location numbers, click OK. You will see Copy in progress. Click Close when the copy completes.

Partition Work, select the Win7 drive, select EVO850 W7 partition, click Copy, change to the M.2 drive, select the Free Space, click Paste. In Name field type Win7, leave the tick in Data Only and don't change the Location numbers, click OK. You will see Copy in progress. Click Close when the copy completes.

We'll resize (smaller) the Win7 parition later.

Restart

Check the BCD Edit, SRP-3 and Win7.

Now to create a third Boot Item.

Boot Edit, click Add
Identity... Win7 (type it in)
HD 0 or 1. Whichever is the M.2
Boot.. SRP-3
In MBR Details, the drive containing Win7 (0 or 1) on the right side
click 0) slot, click Fill, select SRP-3
click 1) slot, click Fill, select Win7

OK, OK again

Restart

Boot Win7

All OK?

 

Edit .... paragraph added to above....

In Partition Work, select the Win7 drive. Just below the Drives line you will see if it is EMBR Partitions or MBR Partitions. We want EMBR partitions so if it is MBR click Change Disk Type (at the top). Click EMBR, Yes. Now you should see EMBR Partitions. This lets you Clear partitions from the Partition Table.

 

What I'd planned was to make an image of the Win10-2 partition with IFD. Then delete the W10-2 partition. Then restore the image to the just created Free Space with IFD. There is no need for a new Boot Item. Just boot Win10-2 from the Boot Menu.

Disk Imaging on the BIBM desktop is IFD.