Solved Restoring Windows backup Image to new SSD

I am having some difficulty with restoring a backup image created with AOMEI Backupper PRO to a new SDD I just installed.
Here are the details:
I have a laptop that came originally with 1TB Samsung SSD. I have a system backup I have created with AOMEI that I can restore to this SSD with no problem.
Today I installed a new SSD to the second nvme slot of my laptop. The Drive is a Samsung 980PRO. As instructed by users on AOMEI forum I restored the backup image to the new SSD (All un-allocated) and the image was written with no error or problem to the new SSD. I then changed boot device in bios and I can boot with no problem with the new SSD into windows.

The problem is that the windows 11 start menu does not work with the new restored image and I have tons of dcom errors in event viewer. Before going any further I would like to know if its OK to have two disks with same partition names and size and switching between them from bios?
I did not think this would be a problem as the first disk boots fine with the second one attached. I also restored the backup image and made sure the image works still fine on the first SSD.

Did you change the new SSD letter to 'C' and reallocate the original SSD another letter not in use?

thecaretaker said:

Did you change the new SSD letter to 'C' and reallocate the original SSD another letter not in use?

Click to expand...

No I didn't change anything! After restoring the image and rebooting, if I boot with the old SSD it still boots with no error and its on drive C: The new one shows as drive E:

I just tried and booted with the new ssd again. In this case it becomes automatically C: and my C: from old SSD becomes E:

Only difference I just realized is that when I boot with the new SDD I have a F: drive created and called SYSTEM_DRV
I don't have it when booting with the old ssd.

And this is how I see the drives in windows disk management:

boot into the os on disk 1 and show us diskmgmt window screenshot

The first one is from new SSD with problems
Second one is from the OLD ssd that works fine

check the partition id of the partition labelled system_drv

easiest way is with diskgenius (free version is fine)

First one is the new drive

you need to click on system_drv to see the guid C12A7328-F81F-11D2-BA4B-00A0C93EC93B

sorry! here we go:

rt click the HD1 (the samsung 980 ) system_drv partition and select "modify partition parameters"

then select Efi System Partition in the dropdown.

Click OK

then click Save ALL at top left.

SIW2 said:

rt click the HD1 (the samsung 980 ) system_drv partition and select "modify partition parameters"

then select Efi System Partition in the dropdown.

Click OK

then click Save ALL at top left.

Click to expand...

I did as you suggested. But still the same problem ! I can boot to windows, but windows is totally messed up! The start menu and search do not work. Non of the windows apps are working! they all give and error and crash! So I removed the OLD original SSD from my laptop nvme slot and kept only the new one. Then restored the same backup image and this time windows booted and everything was normal!
Can it be that it's not possible to have two SAME windows on two different SSD or HDD on same machine?!

One thing at a time.

boot into windows on the samsung 980 and check the system_drv shows as efi system partition.

Assuming that is Ok, the next thing is to set the osletter of the cloned windows partition to the correct volumevalue.

I finally restored the backup image without the old ssd being connected to my laptop and everything works fine again. Then installed the old ssd and now I can boot from both without any problem. The problem is now solved. But I still don't know what went wrong! I hope that when restoring images next time I will not need to remove one ssd to be able to restore to the other one! As this is a little complicated on a laptop

If your partition structure is now like your screenshot in post #7, I notice one thing that you will have to address at some point if your intention is to extend D:
Disk 0 has almost a 2gb recovery partition. This leads me to believe when you restored your image to the larger drive that you did not resize the partitions during the restore process per Aoemi instructions. As it stands right now, you can not gracefully extend the data partition (this is where you will soon be needing additional space) because there is no contiguous space after D: You would have to first manipulate the recovery partition in order to extend D:

Per Aoemi this could have been done during the restore.
"Please select the "Edit Partition" button on the Operation Summary page when a system drive or a partition is restored/cloned. A popup window enables a drive letter to be assigned and allows setting of primary/logical status to the partition. The graphical Partition Bar can be dragged and moved to change the size or location of the partition."
reference

glasskuter said:

If your partition structure is now like your screenshot in post #7, I notice one thing that you will have to address at some point if your intention is to extend D:
Disk 0 has almost a 2gb recovery partition. This leads me to believe when you restored your image to the larger drive that you did not resize the partitions during the restore

Click to expand...

Thanks a lot glasskuter,
I was finally able to restore the old backup image on the new SSD and now they are both the same. Also it's now possible to boot each sdd with no error or problem. here is how my disks look now: (I swapped the disks (now new new ssd is disk 0 and the old one disk1) I just hope it's done the right way this time! )

Not sure why your previous restore hadn't set the efi partition id and from what you posted it seems it hadn't set the osvolumevalue either.

That could have been easily and quickly fixed without performing another restore.

I have a doubt! I am not sure but I guess I know the reason. I always do my backup and restores from windows. I mean that I open AOMEI Backupper software inside windows and then choose to make a backup and I do the same when I restore. When I do the backup everything is done in windows and there is no need to restart. When doing the restore after a few moments AOMEI restarts the PC and goes to a PE environment and then boots back in windows. Unlike every restore, I did the last restore by booting with AOMEI bootable USB and not from windows. Maybe doing so in windows while there is another version of windows running can cause a conflict!? Anyway this is my only guess! I still don't know if next time I want to restore things will work normally again or if I have to again remove the other SSD!

Ok I just figured out what the problem is. If I try again to restore the backup on the new ssd (the one I am booting from) AOMEI decides to restore it to my other SSD! instead of restoring it to my actual C: it wants to restore it to E: (which is the OLD SDD) Is there anyway to fix this?