Need help with boot drive.

[SHORTY-NI]

So I built my PC and made the mistake of assuming a HDD would be good enough and soon found out it wasn't. I've just installed a SSD and cloned my boot HDD (C) drive and tried to follow instructions on making the SSD as the boot drive but in my bios it says that my m.2 ssd is the windows boot manager(it couldn't be, it's too slow...) I tried to boot from the new SSD but it brought up the screen as shown below. My C drive is the HDD, doesn't that mean it's the boot drive and after cloning etc shouldn't I be able to boot from the SSD? Any help would be appreciated. If you could give simple step by step guides on how to fix it, that would be a bonus.. (I'm autistic and need things simple.. thanks.

Edited January 5, 2023 by SHORTY-NI
Forgot to add tags

[C2dan88]

What did you clone from your hdd? C partition AND the EFI boot partition? (<--- this is what makes your drive bootable!)

[Sweebo]

Make sure you have cloned all partitions on the c drive 

[zipspence]

17 minutes ago, SHORTY-NI said:

So I built my PC and made the mistake of assuming a HDD would be good enough and soon found out it wasn't. I've just installed a SSD and cloned my boot HDD (C) drive and tried to follow instructions on making the SSD as the boot drive but in my bios it says that my m.2 ssd is the windows boot manager(it couldn't be, it's too slow...) I tried to boot from the new SSD but it brought up the screen as shown below. My C drive is the HDD, doesn't that mean it's the boot drive and after cloning etc shouldn't I be able to boot from the SSD? Any help would be appreciated. If you could give simple step by step guides on how to fix it, that would be a bonus.. (I'm autistic and need things simple.. thanks.

Alright this can get rough. You have a ton of drives. so.... To make this as simple as possible, Cloning is not the easiest way to get this done. Being that its a 4tb to a 1 tb and I have no idea what software you used to clone the system. I would start fresh. 

1. Create Windows boot media https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/create-installation-media-for-windows-99a58364-8c02-206f-aa6f-40c3b507420d
2. If you can move all critical data OFF of the 4tb to other storage if possible using OneDrive and other drives. 
3. Disconnect the 4tb drive, get into bios and ensure that the 1TB SSD you want as the boot drive is in the top of the boot options. 
4. perform a clean install of windows to the boot drive you want. 
5. reconnect the 4tb drive and reformat it so it is a clean/fresh disk. 

There are other ways of doing all this, but for someone looking for the "easiest" fool proof way, this is what I would suggest doing. 

[SHORTY-NI]

22 minutes ago, C2dan88 said:

What did you clone from your hdd? C partition AND the EFI boot partition? (<--- this is what makes your drive bootable!)

As far as I know I have cloned everything.. I followed 1 YouTube video that didn't mark ssd alignment and I followed that video. I'm seeing another video showing them marking that option, could that be the issue? I am using AOMEI backupper, should I be doing the system clone, disk clone or partition clone option? Like I said I followed that one video and his worked right away. Also what about the bios saying my m.2 is the windows boot manager? Thanks 

[SHORTY-NI]

11 minutes ago, zipspence said:

Alright this can get rough. You have a ton of drives. so.... To make this as simple as possible, Cloning is not the easiest way to get this done. Being that its a 4tb to a 1 tb and I have no idea what software you used to clone the system. I would start fresh. 

1. Create Windows boot media https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/create-installation-media-for-windows-99a58364-8c02-206f-aa6f-40c3b507420d
2. If you can move all critical data OFF of the 4tb to other storage if possible using OneDrive and other drives. 
3. Disconnect the 4tb drive, get into bios and ensure that the 1TB SSD you want as the boot drive is in the top of the boot options. 
4. perform a clean install of windows to the boot drive you want. 
5. reconnect the 4tb drive and reformat it so it is a clean/fresh disk. 

There are other ways of doing all this, but for someone looking for the "easiest" fool proof way, this is what I would suggest doing. 

I am using AOMEI Backupper and I did the disk clone option, not marking 'ssd alignment' as I was following a video. I'm starting to wonder should I have chosen system clone or partition clone instead? If I can't get it to work this way, does your steps mean I have to buy another copy of Windows? Thanks 

[SHORTY-NI]

32 minutes ago, C2dan88 said:

What did you clone from your hdd? C partition AND the EFI boot partition? (<--- this is what makes your drive bootable!)

Another thing, I re read the thing that popped up before continuing and checked what it would say if I had pressed, partition clone.. it says I need to use "System Clone" and do I want to use it. Should I be doing that instead of a simple disk clone?