I'm absolutely at my wits' end with this issue: I'm getting INACCESSIBLE BOOT DEVICE when cloning a M.2 SATA SSD to an NVMe one. I can always format and reinstall Windows but nevertheless, I would much prefer to clone this system and also I want to know if it can be done.
The computer is a HP Pavilion Power 15-cb0xx laptop. The source disk is a Sandisk SD8SNAT-256G SATA SSD connected to the only M.2 slot in the computer and I want to clone this Windows installation to a Western Digital SN750 SE NVMe SSD, also in the M.2 format. I use a USB adapter to use it as a destination disk. The laptop only has one M.2 slot and a SATA port, with a magnetic HDD attached. The BIOS hasn't got any options to change the storage mode to AHCI, RAID or whatever, but as I have inferred from Device Manager, it is running in AHCI mode. The SSD is in GPT Format and the computer is booting into UEFI mode, with Secure Boot disabled by default.
I've tried cloning it with CloneZilla and Acronis True Image with the very same result. BSOD at startup with INACCESSIBLE BOOT DEVICE message, which means that Windows couldn't locate the boot disk. The system is able to boot into Windows RE (although sometimes it's stuck on the black screen with the spinning circle) and correctly detects the Windows setup, even asking for the user account password.
Things I've already tried:
Fiddling with the BCD, restoring the EFI GPT partition and its boot files. It wasn't likely the problem, but to start with something.
Prior to cloning, installing NVMe drivers and editing the Windows Registry so that stornvme would be loaded at boot. Out of things to try, I also made every IAStor driver to be loaded at boot, to no avail. I also tried the "sc.exe config stornvme start= boot" command before cloning.
Updating the Intel RST drivers to the maximum supported version before cloning. It also occurred to me that I could clone the M.2 SATA to a SATA attached disk and boot with that second disk with the NVMe connected in the M.2 slot to get Windows to recognise it. Guess what? If I clone the M.2 SATA to a SATA disk, I also get INACCESSIBLE BOOT DEVICE.
Is there anything more I can do? I don't know exactly what the dealbreaker here is, and the Windows Boot Log tells me that the stornvme driver is being loaded at each boot, but I can't get past the BSOD. I can't shake the feeling that I'm missing something or that there's other thing to try.
