Cloned SSD and it wont boot internally. Only boots from USB

Cmatt · 27 Jul 2016

Hi All, not sure if this is the right forum but im having an issue getting a cloned disk to work on a Dell Laptop.

The laptop is a Dell Latitude E7440 and its running Windows 7.

I have used a bootable Clonezilla USB drive to copy the internal 64 GB SSD to a usb adapter connected 500GB SSD. The clone completed successfully and upon booting the ssd drive connected through usb it works flawlessly.

However, when i remove the internal drive and replace it with the new cloned drive, it throws me a windows failed to start error on a black screen, and there are no options. It tells me to use a windows repair disc to fix it.

Any suggestions on why its only working when plugged in through the USB?

Any additional information you need from me?

fireberd · 28 Jul 2016

When you cloned the drive, did you clone all partitions on the drive? If not that could be the problem. Second cloning is iffy at best and not always successful. Third when you clone you clone the entire drive or partition including bad sectors, bad data blocks, etc. Best option is to Image (backup) the entire drive - all partitions to a separate drive and then create the new drive from the backed up image.