Disk Won't Boot After Cloning, How to Fix?

Larissa updated on Jan 31, 2024 to Data Backup Questions Answered | How-to Articles

I tried to upgrade my HDD to SSD, and I used a hard drive cloning tool. But it turned out that the cloned SSD won't boot anyway. Do you know the reason and how to make it bootable on my Windows 10 HP computer?

The cloned SSD won't boot may be caused for various reasons, including the SSD being connected to your PC as an external hard drive, the bootable mode being incompatible with the SSD, you haven't set the cloned SSD as the boot drive, the disk cloning process is interrupted, the SSD is unbootable, or the boot sectors aren't cloned, etc. You can try the following ways to make it bootable:

  • Set the SSD as the boot drive: When you start your computer, press F2/F10 to enter BIOS Setup Utility. Choose "Boot" and set the cloned SSD as the first boot device. Save changes after that and exit.
  • Connect SSD to your computer correctly with a SATA cable: Make sure you connect the SSD to your computer correctly.
  • Check whether the cloned disk is bootable: Use a partition manager to check whether it's bootable or not.
  • Clone system drive after creating a WinPE bootable media: This procedure is recommended after cloning your system drive; it will guarantee a successful boot after the clone.
  • Re-clone HDD to SSD: If the cloning process is interrupted, or the boot sectors aren't cloned, you can try to clone HDD to SSD again.
  • Use reliable drive cloning software: EaseUS Disk Copy is a professional disk and partition cloning utility that ensures you a 100% successful HDD to SSD cloning and boot from the SSD without any issue.

To sum up, after cloning disk won't boot can happen due to several reasons. You can follow the methods listed above to make it bootable and run again on your Windows computer.

🔗Related Article: Cloned SSD Won't Boot? Make Cloned SSD Bootable [5 Ways]