I have two M.2 SSD's. Removing them is a bit of a pain, I'd like to avoid this if possible.
On my old SSD, I have created a system image from the backup settings and stored this on my external hard drive.
My new SSD also has Windows on it, but it doesn't have any of my old settings, apps, or files. The settings and apps are all I really care about bridging over, transferring the basic media files is trivial.
When I boot from my Windows USB, I enter recovery mode, select troubleshooting, advanced options, and and the option to restore from a system image. I select the new SSD's Windows as the "target" system, and select the backup, EFI filesystem, etc. to be restored.
I leave "Format and repartition other disks" unchecked.
Some time passes, the restore appears to complete with no problems, and system restarts.
When I boot up BIOS, the new SSD doesn't say "Windows Boot Manager" like the old SSD does. So I boot to the old SSD's Windows Boot Manager, and it presents me with my two different Windows installs, like I'd expect. When I select the new SSD's Windows, nothing has changed. Nothing was restored to it. It seems like it just keeps restoring to the old SSD, despite me selecting the new SSD as the target disk.
I still have my old Windows intact, so I haven't lost anything, but what is the problem here? What am I doing incorrectly? What are some alternatives for doing this?
I would like to avoid paid third party software here, it is not necessary to use for a system restore.
Edit: I had originally tried cloning the old SSD to the new one, but this presented issues. Selecting the new M.2's Windows Boot Manager from BIOS kept booting me to my old SSD's Windows. I'm certain it was doing this, because I could tell that the old SSD was the active drive C: drive based on the volume's size.
Maybe both of these can be resolved if I just nuke my old SSD's Windows and leave the system image of it on an old HDD (like it is now), just in case. But if this doesn't work properly like the two things listed above, it feels like it'll be another day or two worth of attempts just to try and get something to work.
