Tried cloning my storage - crazy stuff of nightmares

[sand_dune]

A while ago I tried doing just that to clone my storage after buying a new SSD drive.

I have a laptop Asus FX504GM that had a hard drive and M.2 SSD. i bought a bigger SSD and thought to clone the existing SSD into the HDD and then into the new SSD.

I downloaded some free cloning app from the internet, started the cloning process, it needed to restart the PC and started cloning data before Windows would boot. It took the right amount of time to do so and reported process completed.

I removed the old SSD and tried booting into HDD. No system disk. I then replaced the old SSD and tried booting into that with HDD present - no system disk. I then removed the HDD and tried booting into the old SSD that had always worked before - no system disk.

I then created a windows install on a USB drive and installed that into the new SSD and I don't exactly remember how many times I tried different combinations, but windows would install but not work with the HDD present in the system would also permanently disable itself on the SSD once the HDD is present. It's some crazy stuff! To clarify - I install windows on SSD then add HDD and it would blow it all, I remove HDD still no system disk.

I'm now afraid to put anything else into the laptop as it is currently working with just an SSD and a fresh windows install.

I suspect this crazy behaviour though unforgivable can be fixed by taking the HDD into my very old laptop starting a windows XP install and clearing the partitions in the beginning of setup. The partitions didn't look right for a system disk to me.

But what the hell why would my windows would permanently get killed after I insert the HDD?

 

[sand_dune]

What I can add - Win 10 boot drive consists of several partitions, something like 3. That HDD even after the cloning attempt only contained 1 partition. That was suspicious to me. I've no idea if windows can work from 1 partition or not. Whatever was written into it was KILLING my windows disks making them inaccessible. But anyway I now dug up my old laptop and found XP installation CD with the help of that I deleted that partition in HDD and created a new one. I've put this HDD into my new laptop and it is still working and seeing 2 disks, like it should.

The question remains how a bootable disk can become forever unbootable?