I don't know if anyone else has had this problem when cloning hard drives to SSDs ? I have done several recently and no problems using Macrium Reflect. So I try to do my wife's HP 655 laptop and the cloned SSD is apparently unreadable see image below. I have repeated the process using a different cloning program ( EasUS) which gets the same result and if you run a test program on the drive everything looks OK and there is what looks like a copy of the C: drive and all of the partitions present. So in desperation I send the drive back thinking that there must be something wrong with it. They send me a new one and I get the same result. My next step will be to do a clean Win 10 instell from an ISO file. Is there something weird about the BIOS on HP laptops I wonder.? Any suggestions welcome.


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Looks familiar. I had this a while back when I did a similar upgrade. It was not terminal. I can't actually remember what I did to fix it, but I think it has something to do with either the boot order in the BIOS (is the origional HDD still in situ??) or the way the PC reads the informaiton from the disk during the boot cycle - "traditional" or UEFI??
Hope this points you in the right direction and is not a red herring

Thanks for your response but yes I have been down the boot order stuff and UEFI etc and this evening I tried to build a fresh Win10 system on the SSD using an ISO file on a USB downloaded from microsoft. The install wont work as it apparently can't find the SSD! It's a laptop so there is only one SATA port to plug it into. Now wondering if there is some weird incompatibility between laptop and a SATA 3 SSD. Its a SANDISK SSD plus 240GB. 3 x FL1 2 manual + 1 auto
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That looks like a pxe-boot error.

It's trying to boot from the network card, and because you haven't got a network cable plugged in, you're getting a media fault.

Now we just need to figure out WHY it's booting from the network card.

Assuming you've sorted the boot order (ie the hard drive is above the network in the boot order), then that suggests the hard drive is unreadable or doesn't have a bootable sector on it.

However, if that were the case I'd expect to see an error about the hard drive - and there isn't one. Just the pxe-boot error.

I know you've said you've checked the boot order but I respectfully suggest that you check again - just to make sure. Also, take the network OUT of the boot sequence and see if the error changes.....

EDIT - just reread your second post. Sounds like that laptop can't see that hard drive at all. Hence why is failing over to a pxe-boot (network boot) - which is the error you're getting on the screen shot. If you take the network card completely out of the boot sequence, the error should change to something more relevant to the hard drive issue.

Yes there is something weird going on here,
First of all network boot is disabled but the hard drive doesn't appear in the boot list, in fact the bios can't see it. I tried to do a Win 10 install and it stopped saying that a driver was required. I am now thinking AHCI but there is no mention of it in the bios and the laptop was originally supplied with Win 8 64 bit so I would expect it to provide AHCI support.

I have just plugged the SSD into a different laptop (an LG one) and it's been recognised in the bios on that one.

The plot thickens but is pointing towards some incompatibility between an HP655 and an SSD... 3 x FL1 2 manual + 1 auto
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As you say, a weird one - without sitting in front of it, it's very difficult to be of much help.

That screenshot is definitely a pxe-boot error caused by trying to boot from the network without being able to contact a pxe-boot server (in this case because there is no network, as there is no network cable attached - hence the "check cable" message).

The screenshot error messages are nothing to do with the hard drive.

Why the pxe-boot error is being displayed if network boot is disabled is odd to say the least.

On the face of it, I'd agree that the SSD is incompatible with that laptop (for reasons unknown), but that the laptop (on not finding a valid local boot device) is failing over to network boot (which then fails, causing the screenshot error message).

I suspect that an error message relating to the hard drive (of which there might be none, given it would appear not to recognise the device) is being masked by the pxe-boot error message.

PS> HP Laptops are famous for not providing user configurable AHCI support in the BIOS. I think later models might, but they went through a phase of not allowing users to access that feature - ie it was just "enabled" by default and the user can't change it. In any event, an SSD should work fine without AHCI enabled.....it just might be marginally slower against the same drive with AHCI enabled......still WAY quicker than a plattered drive.

One more piece of information - I took a similar SSD with a working Win 10 system from another laptop and put it in the HP just to see if it would start loading and it couldn't even see it in the bios! 3 x FL1 2 manual + 1 auto
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Assuming the drive is installed correctly, and that the BOOT order is correct, !, then it sounds like you may need a BIOS reset / upgrade. If no BIOS upgrades are available, try a smaller sized SATA II drive.

*Most* laptops are SATA III compatible - though may not run at full speed. 

I tried to install a Sandisk SSD plus 960GB in my Alienware PC recently, various cloning software resulted in error messages about available reserve space being less than 10%, sent the SSD back and the replacement SSD was faulty too, I even tried installing the SSD in a laptop. The errors had to be confirmed by Ebuyer before they would replace or refund, but once they confirmed the errors, there was no problem. The second SSD error was similar to the one in the op.

In the end I bought a Intel 535 series 480GB ssd, installed it in the Alienware PC after cloning it with no problems, Just installed one in the laptop too.

It's looking like a bios problem in the laptop. I have just used the same SSD to clone the HDD in another computer and when installed it worked a treat. Now to do battle with HP to see what's going on, I gather that on quite a few PCs these days they hide a number of the bios features and that you can get to the advanced stuff using key combinations like ALT+ F10 at load time. Worth a try. 3 x FL1 2 manual + 1 auto
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