I originally had two M.2 SSDs installed: a 1TB drive in the top slot used for games, and a 2TB drive in the second slot containing Windows. I bought a newer SSD and used Samsung Magician to clone Windows and my files to it. The cloning appeared to finish successfully.
Afterward, I installed the new SSD in the top M.2 slot as the Windows drive and moved the previous top-slot SSD to the lower slot. Since then, several things seem wrong. The new SSD does not appear correctly among my formatted drives, and Task Manager reports the new Windows drive as 2TB even though it should be 1TB. It reports the other drive as 1TB even though that one is actually 2TB. Both drives do appear normally in Disk Management and File Explorer.
Task Manager also says I have no startup apps listed, even though programs still launch with Windows. My Medal clips are missing, Battle.net claims Overwatch is uninstalled, and my CPU temperature is going above 80°C even though that never happened before. The BIOS appears to be booting from the correct drive. I'm really overwhelmed and would appreciate help figuring out whether the cloning or moving the drives caused this.
2 Answers
Since the drive sizes are reversed in Task Manager but look correct in Disk Management and File Explorer, Windows may be identifying the physical disks or the cloned installation inconsistently rather than the storage actually being damaged. First, power the system down and reseat both M.2 drives, then verify their model numbers and capacities in the motherboard firmware and Disk Management. It would also be safer to back up important files before making more changes. The missing game and clip files could simply be because the applications are looking for their old drive letters or library paths. The high CPU temperature is a separate concern, though—check CPU usage in Task Manager, make sure the cooler and fan are working, and avoid heavy use if the temperature stays above 80°C at idle.
One possibility is that the computer is still booting from the old Windows installation, even if the BIOS screen appears to show the new drive. The easiest way to test this is to shut down, disconnect every other storage drive, and leave only the newly cloned SSD connected. Then boot into Windows and check which drive contains the active Windows installation. If it fails to boot, the clone may not have copied the boot files correctly, or the BIOS boot entry may need to be repaired.
I checked the BIOS and it looked like the correct drive was selected, but I haven’t tested the new SSD completely by itself yet.