Messed up windows boot drive during ssd cloning and now only blank screen

[objeong]

Hi guys,
I'm really hoping someone can help me here because I'm at a loss now.
I use a windows/ubuntu dual boot system and I recently bought an m2 ssd to upgrade from my hdd. I cloned the hdd onto my ssd and created a usb rescue media using Macrium Reflect shown in (https://www.howtogeek.com/199068/how-to-upgrade-your-existing-hard-drive-in-under-an-hour/). After cloning, I restarted the device (I did not disconnect the usb used for rescue media nor the old hdd), it skipped the usual dual boot option menu, then I saw it go into Macrium Reflect without booting up windows. I followed what is shown in "Deploying the Recovery Media" in the link I posted, but I got an error message that led to nowhere. I restarted the computer by pressing on the power button and now I'm just stuck on a black screen. I've seen some similar posts where people saw blank screen with loading animation but for me, its just a blank screen and nothing else. So now,

• Computer turns on but nothing is shown on my monitor. Monitor does not say "no signal."
• Keyboard turns on and I see the numberlock turn on as well.
• I've tried turning on the computer with ssd removed (just hdd), hdd removed (just ssd), and I get the same results. blank screen with nothing else.

Has anyone seen something like this? Any tips would be much appreciated!

 

[terzaerian]

Damn this sucks. Drive cloning can be a pain in the ***! Especially because there is a lot of dishonest info out there. When I was struggling with this issue a lot of searches just pointed to webpages that were set up by companies expressly to promote their drive-cloning software.

If your M2 is a Samsung, I do recommend the utility Samsung includes for cloning, as I've used it before and can certify that it "just works".

Otherwise, the two utilities I've had the most luck with are Macrium Reflect and EaseUS ToDo backup. In particular, I used EaseUS and selected the option to perform a "sector by sector backup" to create my clone disk. This consistently seems to be the option that will dependably create a bootable cloned disk. However, this was with older versions of Windows, so YMMV.

The stability of your current 'build' of Windows may also factor in. I had an older 'build' of Windows 10 that had been migrated over from Windows 7 that I was really loathe to part with, because it had a few programs that had been possible to install on Windows 7 that still ran but were no longer installable on Windows 10. Eventually, however, the whole thing just got too unstable to keep working or keep cloning, and I had to flatten and start again. Thankfully I lost no data or program configs, but sometimes it is better to take the L and start fresh.