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NVME boot drive corrupted during clonezilla clone process: how to restore boot files?

john errington 95 Reputation points
2025-11-05T10:48:44.24+00:00

I used CloneZilla to clone my NVME boot drive to an external HDD.

The clone is corrupt - but now my PC wont boot. I've removed the drive and connected it to this PC via USB.

Here is the structure as shown by Partition Wizard - its listed as disk 2

User's image

This is what I've done so far:

Disk ### Status Size Free Dyn Gpt

Disk 0 Online 1863 GB 0 B *

Disk 1 Online 232 GB 1024 KB *

Disk 2 Online 223 GB 1024 KB *

DISKPART> select disk 2

Disk 2 is now the selected disk.

DISKPART> list partition

Partition ### Type Size Offset

Partition 1 System 100 MB 1024 KB

Partition 2 Reserved 16 MB 101 MB

Partition 3 Primary 222 GB 117 MB

Partition 4 Recovery 507 MB 223 GB

DISKPART> lis vol

Volume ### Ltr Label Fs Type Size Status Info

Volume 0 F DVD-ROM 0 B No Media

Volume 1 D Data NTFS Partition 750 GB Healthy

Volume 2 E Media NTFS Partition 1010 GB Healthy

Volume 3 K RAW Partition 102 GB Healthy

Volume 4 C NTFS Partition 231 GB Healthy Boot

Volume 5 Recovery NTFS Partition 529 MB Healthy Hidden

Volume 6 FAT32 Partition 99 MB Healthy System

Volume 7 NTFS Partition 702 MB Healthy Hidden

Volume 8 G NTFS Partition 222 GB Healthy

  • Volume 9 FAT32 Partition 100 MB Healthy Hidden Volume 10 NTFS Partition 507 MB Healthy Hidden

DISKPART> sel vol 9

Volume 9 is the selected volume.

DISKPART> assign letter=t

DiskPart successfully assigned the drive letter or mount point.

C:\Windows\System32>dir t:

Volume in drive T has no label.

Volume Serial Number is C8BA-9ADB

Directory of T:\

05/05/2021 15:38 <DIR> EFI

           0 File(s)              0 bytes

           1 Dir(s)      72,437,760 bytes free
```C:\Windows\System32>bcdboot c:\windows /s T: /f UEFI

Boot files successfully created.

but the drive still fails with winload.efi missing or corrupted.
Windows for home | Windows 11 | Recovery and backup
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  1. john errington 95 Reputation points
    2025-11-05T17:00:49.1333333+00:00

    Thanks for your help. Sadly none of this worked.

    I tried again assigning a new letter, again with no success: the bcdboot came back with a list of accepted commands, and the PC stopped recognising the drive. I thought it had died.

    In desperation I restored it to the original PC, and ran a windows iso from USB (via Ventoy, which is GREAT)

    "repair your computer" and to my delight it found a system image and did a repair: and now it works.

    However the assigned letters were still appearing in explorer even though the drive (and volume) are no longer connected.

    I also discovered the USB port the drive had been attached to had been disabled.

    On fixing that the drive letters disappeared so all is well.

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  2. Volume Z 1,475 Reputation points Volunteer Moderator
    2025-11-05T11:45:12.71+00:00

    You need to use the affected Windows' drive letter.

    bcdboot G:\Windows /s T: /f UEFI

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