I recently upgraded my system by installing a 256GB NVME drive dedicated to Windows, moving from a slower 2TB SSD setup. I cloned my Windows installation using Macrium Reflect from a 500GB partition on the SSD to the NVME drive. After cloning, I set the NVME drive as the boot device in the BIOS, but it doesn't appear there. Instead, I have to press F11 during startup to access the Windows Boot Manager and select the NVME drive to boot successfully. I also tried to erase the old 500GB partition, but encountered an error due to it being in use, and after rebooting, my PC reverted to the older installation. Now, every time I want to boot from the NVME drive, I have to select it manually from the boot manager. Any guidance on how I can set the NVME drive as the default boot option without the need for F11? My motherboard is an MSI B450 Gaming Plus, running Windows 11 25H2.
3 Answers
Try disconnecting the old SSD completely and see if you can boot from the NVME on its own. If it still doesn't work, it likely means the EFI partition wasn't cloned correctly and the computer is defaulting to the SSD's boot settings. If cloning doesn't work, consider doing a clean install with the SSD disconnected. It might save you from further issues.
It sounds like you need to clone the EFI partition along with Windows to make the NVME drive bootable by default. Make sure that the EFI, recovery, and system reserved partitions are cloned correctly to the NVME drive. Without those, your system won't know how to boot from the new drive automatically.
You could create a new EFI partition on the NVME drive and clone the old one from the SSD to it. This could be complicated though. If it doesn't work, a clean install might indeed be the best bet, though I understand you want to avoid that. Just make sure to back everything up before trying any of these methods!
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