Hi everyone, looking for help with an SSD/Win problem: My Thinkpad with Win11 has been acting up lately, and I am fairly sure the problem is with the SSD (very high disk load on startup and shortly before each of the many many crashes.) I would like to avoid having to set up my system from scratch.

I have a new SSD and have tried the following:

  • leave bitlocker intact, boot into Ubuntu live, dd the old disk to an external USB drive, install new SSD, dd disk to new SSD
  • same as above but with bitlocker disabled
  • boot into Clonezilla live, clone old SSD to external storage, clone external storage to new SSD
  • clean Windows install on new SSD and clone c: partition to new SSD with Clonezilla

All of these attempts invariably lead to an “INACCESSIBLE_BOOT_DEVICE” blue screen, and “bootrec /fixboot” and the like executed from the recovery CMD shows “0 Windows installations found.” Booting into Ubuntu live with the cloned SSD installed I can see all my user data intact with no apparent problems.

Is my old SSD/Windows installation broken beyond repair and do I have to accept it and move on or am I missing something?

Thanks for any help or pointers!

  • @[email protected]
    0•1 year ago

    For DECADES I’ve always found upgrading a windows HD to be a real nightmare. Sad to hear it isn’t getting much easier.

    • @[email protected]OP
      1•1 year ago

      The thing that really trips me up is whether or not I should expect what I’m doing to work or not. Am I doing the right things and the old SSD has a faulty controller or something? Or does it just not work like that? Drives me up the walls.