Solved Backup software and the newer Gen 4 NVMe drives - not a question

Scott · Dec 13, 2023

It all started with a Sk hynix Platinum P41, same size as my previous 980 Pro boot drive. A Macrium clone of the 980 to the P41 resulted in "Inaccessible Boot device".
I then wiped the drive and did a Macrium restore. No joy, same result. Macrium "Fix Boot Problem" didn't work, neither did any bcdboot commands.
So I gave it a try with Hasleo, same exact result. Two backup suites, same "Inaccessible Boot device". I figured it must be this drive.

I found a 1TB 990 Pro an Amazon for $79.99 US so I bought it. When I installed it I restored an older 23H2 image and guess what? "Inaccessible Boot device". The only thing I could do with this new drive (as well as the P41) was clean install Windows, so I did. I had it running really well except for intermittent issues with both my Lan and WiFi, even with the latest drivers installed. "Oops, were having trouble finding that page". Selecting Retry would load the page. It was random, with any website.

I really really wanted my previous install back, so I gave it another try with the 990 Pro, no joy. So I turned on my System 2 and started searching. I ran across this thread on the Macrium Forum about this same issue. Member jphughan suggested using Macrium's ReDeploy tool. I figured, what the heck, I'll give it a whirl.

Well, lo and behold, it worked! Booted right up. I've made multiple Macrium clones in the past without any issues until these two drives. My old 980 Pro boot drive wasa clone of my previous boot drive and it booted fine. So when all else fails, try ReDeploy, it worked for me.

Cheers,
Scott

BrianInEngland · Dec 13, 2023

My guess would be that the NVMe storage drivers weren't installed for the new drive. I remember when I did something similar I had to install the new drive, let Windows detect it (thus installing the Standard NVMe controller for that drive) and THEN do the clone.

That's why it worked from a clean install - the Setup detected the drive and installed the driver automatically

Macrium Redeploy is designed to restore to bare metal systems so it would detect and install necessary drivers

POLYSIUS · Dec 13, 2023

Run cmd
sc Config stornvme Start=Boot
run a backup
and the Recovery works fine

glasskuter · Dec 13, 2023

I found I do not usually have any problem If I remove all other drives, insert nvme drivers into Macrium recovery media, and then restore the Macrium image to the new drive. I never clone. When it comes to third party storage controller drivers, both Macrium and even a clean install with Windows go a little crazy if you don't insert them.

hdmi · Dec 13, 2023

BrianInEngland said:
My guess would be that the NVMe storage drivers weren't installed for the new drive. I remember when I did something similar I had to install the new drive, let Windows detect it (thus installing the Standard NVMe controller for that drive) and THEN do the clone.

That's why it worked from a clean install - the Setup detected the drive and installed the driver automatically

Macrium Redeploy is designed to restore to bare metal systems so it would detect and install necessary drivers

Windows automatically detects the new drive (and installs a driver for it) when you boot Windows into Safe Mode. So, AFAIK after the new drive is installed you typically just have to:

initialize it as GPT,
restore the relevant partitions to it with automatic resize (or, alternatively, restore only the Windows partition and then use WinPE to re-create the EFI partition, along with the optional MSR and/or recovery partition etc., but avoid cloning if the method used for cloning can't handle automatic resize unless of course you want to manually resize or the new drive's capacity is equal to that of the old one or you just don't care),
run the bcdboot command (to be able to get it right, you may have to use the DISKPART utility to figure out what's the volume number of the EFI partition and then temporarily assign a drive letter to it... bcdboot also can accept devicepaths like \Device\HarddiskVolume2 in lieu of a drive letter but the number doesn't necessarily always match so that's why temporarily assigning a drive letter is the safer method to use for this),
boot Windows into Safe Mode,
wait a few moments,
boot Windows normally again,
check for a fimware update,
diagnose the new drive (including performance testing while monitoring the drive temps e.g. with HWiNFO64 portable),
toss the old drive in a drawer somewhere and
enjoy the new drive, but still continue to monitor the temps to see how it behaves.