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QuestionCloning an HDD to an SDD ?

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Hi!

I used Macrium Reflect to clone two volumes (EFI system partition used for Windows Boot Manager and GRUB, and primary NTFS containing operating system with files) from an HDD to an SDD.

After I tried to boot, the cloned GRUB gave errors. Then I deleted the cloned GRUB from the EFi volume from SDD. Now I see black screen for some minutes and laptop shuts down.

I am suspecting that the EFI volume on SDD includes reference to the old drive letter(s).

How to fix that issue? With diskpart on Windows on HDD?

HDD contains Windows 11 and latest Ubuntu with FAT32 partition. During cloning, I only selected FAT32 and Windows 11 partition.

👁 2026-04-01 14_53_59-Trial – Macrium Reflect X Home license expires on 01.05.2026 – v10.0.8750 UEFI.png

Ext on Hitachi is for Ubuntu.

During cloning, I also extended the original size of Windows volume to the maximum that was free on SDD.

Firstly the GRUB did not detect Windows on SDD. I then refreshed the GRUB on Ubuntu and now I have two Windows entries on GRUB. 1 on HDD is working but second on SDD is not booting (black screen for 2 minutes and then laptop shuts off).
Last edited by a moderator:
the cloned BCD on the SSD’s EFI still points to the old partition GUID from the HDD (not the new one on the SSD). (the Windows Boot Manager loads but can’t find the OS.

We need to force the SSD to create its own boot entries.
also need to manually rebuild the BCD store using the command prompt to point the SSD to its own boot files.

I’ve put together a list of the diskpart and bcdboot commands you need to run to re-link the SSD bootloader here


After these commands:
Reboot
In Ubuntu (from HDD), run: sudo update-grub

then Go into your BIOS/UEFI settings → Boot order → put the SSD first (Windows Boot Manager on the SSD).
Disconnect HDD and see if the SSD boots by itself
SDD boots to the corrupted GRUB.
After putting HDD to the caddy, BIOS is not detecting the HDD anymore.
I had the same with SDD in the caddy before and after a couple of days it automatically appeared in Windows Explorer.
Reactions: popatim
Is it worth to switch HDD back to the laptop’s main hard disk slot if it has been recognized properly there by the system before?
Are there any performance differences between being in the caddy vs main hard disk slot?
When you say SSD, is it a SATA or NVMe drive? Cloning a SATA drive to NVMe is often tricky. With Windows, most of the time you have to force the system to boot in safe mode first to make it load the required driver and fix the boot partition. With Linux, you need to boot in single user mode or with a recovery tool like SystemRescue to reinstall Grub. I had to do that almost every time I cloned a system SATA drive to an NVMe.

Having two OS installed on the drive makes things more complicated. I have never tried it myself but if the EFI partition includes both OS it might be much more difficult to make the migration to NVMe.

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