TeraByte Unlimited

I've been using BootIt since NG, then BM now trying UEFI... I don't have complex needs, I just use it to make copies of my Windows Partitions, Program Partitions and Data Partitions. I always have at least 3 copies of the OS that are bootable as well as my other partitions. I spread these out over several HDD and SSD. Now with Win 11 coming I am upgrading a PC that I bought for my wife in 2019 that she never used so I can move to Win 11.

The new PC had Win 10 on a 128GB M.2 SSD, too small for Win 11 so I bought a 4 TB M.2 to take it's Place. I also added a 1TB Sata SSD to move the OS to before upgrade to Win 11. I figured moving everything around with BIU would be a snap...

I installed BIU on my M.2 drive. I saw everything M.2, HDD and new SSD. I was going to copy partitions but decided to make sure the system worked.
It booted fine with the slight oddity of the HP Logo being off center. Windows came up fine all was good.

I rebooted and I could no longer see my SSD or HDD only the M.2 SSD from the maintenance menu.

I deinstalled BIU and re-installed. When I could see everything I copied the System partition to my SSD and the HDD and turned on Bit 55 and I could see everything after that. I copied the Windows and the RE partitions to my SSD and set up boot menu items for the new SSD and the M.2 SSD and was able to boot both and the world was a happy Place.

Question 1. Is copying the STSTEM partition to all the Disks you want to manage with BIU necessary or the right way to manage, move and copy partitions between Disks? Or should there only be one system partition per PC?

I next removed my M.2 SSD and installed the 4TB version. I formatted it with BIU to GPT and copied the System, Windows and RE partitions from the SSD that was booting fine to the new M.2 SSD. My system never booted again. I get a windows message saying that it can’t boot PC needs to be repaired, a required device isn’t connected or can’t be accessed.

I tried to run the repair disk but it didn't help, I ran CHKDSK it's clean. I started looking at the BCD of the system partition and some things look strange, but I'm not sure how they should look.

Question 2. Is there a listing somewhere that shows what the BCD should look like?

Question 3. Once again, all I see is my M.2 SSD is there something that is causing these Disks to disappear and sometimes reappear?

drdarell,

Or should there only be one system partition per PC?

Only one ESP per computer.

Is there a listing somewhere that shows what the BCD should look like?

https://www.terabyteunlimited.com/kb/kb ... bootit-bm/

It's the same with BIU.

Once again, all I see is my M.2 SSD is there something that is causing these Disks to disappear and sometimes reappear?

If Fast Boot is enabled in the BIOS, disable it. This is not the "Fast Start" setting in BIU.

I assume you are using the 128 GB drive to run your Windows?
What partitions are on this drive? Sizes?

I have a SYSTEM partition of 260 MIB (Fat-32), Msft Reserved 16MB, Windows 118.43 GB (NTFS), Windows RE Partition of 557 MB (NTFS

Support told me not to move the partitions with BIU, but to use Image for Windows. The did not answer my question about the SYSTEM partition, So Brian thanks for that. I'll check Fast Boot in the BIOS, I hadn't done that.

I did reinstall my old M.2 disk and it still didn't boot so I reinstalled BIU on my SSD and was able to get things booting again from the M.2. I looked over the original BCD in the system folder and pretty much figured out how it works and what was going wrong. I was able to do a BCD edit on the SYSTEM partition on my SSD to get my SSD bootable with no references to the M.2 SSD and I hid all the partitions too. I also installed Partwork and Image for windows and got a copy of that M.2 Disk so I have it if I need it. But this seems to be working fine so I'm going to try and reinstall the 4TB M.2 and set up the Boot manager and clean up the BCD file and see where I am. I'll also delete the System File from my HDD and the SSD and do a clean install of BIU when I'm done. Thanks for the help!

Thanks. I assume you don't have other ESPs in your system.
Extra ESPs can cause bizarre issues.
My approach would be to create an Entire Drive image of your booting 128 GB drive. Then remove the drive from the computer and replace it with your 4 tb drive. Use IFL, IFW or IFU to restore the image. In addition to the default Options, use Change GUID.

I'd expect success.

OK, put the 4TB M.2 disk in and with BIU installed on my SSD my SSD booted fine. Partwork to edit and clean up the BCD on the 4TB drive, rebooted and set up Boot Manager for the 4TB drive and it booted up fine. All is working. Now I'm not really sure why I can't have a system drive on each disk. I'm actually thinking of having BIU installed on each so if I lose a drive I could still boot and get up and running quickly. I might test this and see what happens.