Windows Not Loading from a Cloned SSD

[djkomic]

Hello!
I have the Asus K571GT, 256GB on the SSD and 1TB on the HDD.
I bought a 2TB SSD, "WD_BLACK 2TB SN770 NVMe Internal Gaming SSD Solid State Drive - Gen4 PCIe, M.2 2280", and got an SSK enclosure and used Macrium to clone my SSD (SSD = C Drive with Windows) to the new SSD.

The K571GT runs on a Gen 3, but I checked online AND confirmed with Asus Support and they said the Gen 4 is backwards compatible and will still run on my laptop, just at Gen 3 speeds.

Downloaded Macrium, followed a tutorial via YouTube about the steps to take. Cloning was successful.
Open up the Laptop, swapped out the old SSD for the new SSD.
Booted back up, and the laptop is stuck on the ASUS loading screen.

Waited a few minutes and Windows never loaded.
Held down the F2 button and powered up, and I can't even load into BIOS.

Eventually I swapped out the New SSD for the old one, and I'm back online again.
I plug in the cloned SSD via USB-C port, Windows recognizes it.
But when its inserted into the SSD slot inside the computer, the computer just doesn't recognize it at all.

What went wrong? And how can I fix this?

[ElectroStingz]

Hello,

That particular laptop generation doesn't work too well with a lot of modern NVME drives and is officially only up to 512GB on the nvme side. 

Usually this works best with a blank drive but to test compatibility,  with the laptop in a working state enter the BIOS and disable secure boot. Once done get to windows and turn the laptop off.

Unplug both drives, the old nvme and old 1TB HDD.

Plug only the new nvme drive and power on and see what happens.

If it hangs like this possibly the drive is not compatible but to fully rule out you should have a blank drive with 0 partitions in the event the clone process didnt work and is causing the issue.

[djkomic]

Which is funny, because I checked online and confirmed with an ASUS support person and they said it is compatible and even tho the SN770 is Gen 4, it will work on the laptop, just as Gen 3 speeds, which I was fine with.

[ElectroStingz]

Maybe its just the clone gone wrong (I hope) but if the above test doesn't work and the laptop still hangs with only the blank drive / secure boot off it's not good. I can't remember where it was / an old post somewhere but it was Crucial P3, WD nvme and some others that didn't work.