Swapping a HDD to an Identical PC

Elppa8 on 13/10/2022 - 15:57

Looking for some help in swapping a HDD to another PC.

I have a Dell 9020m that I use for data logging for three solar inverters and a weather station that uploads 24/7. In case of HDD failure I clone the drive every six months or after a major change so I can be up and running again fairly quickly.

So I got into dangerous territory and started thinking, why not have a have a spare Dell 9020m on hand too in case of failure. This is where it got tricky for me, I had read that it is possible to transfer a HDD to into the the same model PC and it will most times work, except for me.

The error messages include “Media test failure, check cable” and “No Boot Device Found”. So my question is, can it be done and where do I go from here? I have uploaded some pics of the bios settings if that helps. https://imgur.com/a/Mup1P9y

Computing Computer Component Hard Drive

Comments

  • mranderson978 on 13/10/2022 - 16:11

    check cable indicates you didn't plug it in properly. Or perhaps the drive itself is faulty.

    I notice the spec page for the 9020m says it's compatible with m.2 is that what you're using?

    it's possible to have the drive inserted in the slot and screw it in position but still have it not detected because it's not seated properly. Trust me, I've done it myself.

    It's also possible the m.2 drive is faulty, in which case it'll give an error saying no boot device found (yeah, I've done that before too)

    The above applies to sata cables and drives too.

  • scrimshaw on 13/10/2022 - 16:12
    +2

    There's a list of possible causes (and how to fix them here) https://www.easeus.com/disk-copy/clone-resource/cloned-hard-…

    My best guess is that you have an incomplete clone of the disk (you forgot to clone the boot partition?), or there's a MBR => GPT conflict that you need to fix.

  • randomusername2017 on 13/10/2022 - 16:23
    +1

    Tried UEFI/no legacy rom?…

  • freefall101 on 13/10/2022 - 17:13

    Have you gone into the BIOS to make sure that drive is selected as the boot drive?

  • ozwog05 on 13/10/2022 - 17:25

    Make sure the SATA Operation Mode on the donor machine is the same as the original machine under the BIOS (Eg. RAID, AHCI).

  • AndyC1 on 13/10/2022 - 18:10

    Do you have the data on C:? If so this is the biggest mistake people make about data as it should be on a drive/partition that only has the data. This will allow you to backup just the data and/or move it to another PC allot easier.

    If you want to ensure that the data on the ONE is is safe then look at putting the data on a raid 5 HDD setup.

    If you want to ensure you can fully recover then you will need to have at least two backup that are cycled and checked to ensure that the data is not corrupted before you back it up and also verify the backup.

  • Elppa8 on 13/10/2022 - 18:22

    Thanks all for quick responses. randomusername2017 suggestion was the solution.
    The spare PC is one I recently purchased from Australian Computer Traders that has a older Samsung SSD. It or the win10 installation needs to start in Legacy and the the cloned SSD needs UEFI. I don’t know why but I will have to label them so I don’t forget.

    • mranderson978 on 14/10/2022 - 09:19

      Actually, that kinda makes sense. Not because it's a good idea but because Dell would have originally shipped the PC with HDD in legacy mode.

      The new HDD gets the "better than Dell" award.

  • vince088 on 13/10/2022 - 20:48

    This should work. I've done this.

    I have 2 PC's with the same cpu/motherboard. different ram & graphics card (work was throwing them away)
    I can swap hard drives/SSD/NVMe and the windows 10 and user will move to that PC

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