Replacing Intel Optane with SanDisk WD Blue SN5100

[DrRadar]

I've just spent about 40 hours trying to replace the 512 GB Intel Optane SSD in my HP Envy 17t (running Windows 11 25H2) with a 1 TB SanDisk WD Blue SN5100. It was not a smooth process, full of trial and error. I finally got it working and thought I would share my experience. I'm going from memory and will not take the time to include screen shots. But I still somebody else benefits from these notes. I describe a bunch of stuff that didn't work (in case somebody wants to comment or correct something) and it's a bit lengthy - I'll bold the important stuff that helped to get it working. 

• I have been getting sporadic error reports of Optane memory problems for months. I disabled the Optane memory a long time ago. I eventually installed CrystalDiskInfo which indicated that the SSD health was only 2% and a failure was imminent.
• I'm an engineer but certainly not a WIndows expert. I thought that replacing the SSD would be fairly straight-forward. I did some homework and decided on a 1 TB WD Blue SN5100 NVMe SSD (M.2 2280 PCIe 4.0). I also bought a USB adapter for cloning the existing SDD to the new SSD.
• There are many tools available for cloning without a clear choice. I decided to try Clonezilla because established, popular public domain tools are usually wrung out well.
• I made a bootable Clonezilla DVD and booted it. It reported "fsync error = 5" at the end but I couldn't figure out what that means exactly. The new SSD would not boot (but the old one would), reporting something about a missing file.
  • Using Linux tools available on the Clonezilla boot DVD (particularly partx and fdisk), I determined that the partitions on the new SSD were not created properly. The partition boundaries were not even on a cluster boundary.
  • Using fdisk, I was able to view the partition table on the Optane SSD then recreate it on the new SSD, putting the extra space into the Windows system disk partition. Then I clonezilla'ed each partition individually using expert mode to avoid resizing the destination partitions. No dice - no boot.
• Several posts said that the BIOS had to be reconfigured to change the disk configuration from "IRST" (Intel Rapid Storage Technology) to "AHCI" (whatever that is). I could not change that in my BIOS, although it did show the SN5100 as "non-RAID" disk. Diagnostics passed on the SN5100.
• I resigned myself to simply starting from scratch with installing Windows, like a new system. I created a bootable USB using the HP Cloud Recovery Tool. It did boot, but I wasn't able to see the new SSD when installed. The recovery tool got into a loop of partitioning the disk, then rebooting to install files (apparently normal behavior), but then it would start all over. Another dead end.
• I created a Windows 11 bootable USB to install from scratch, but it didn't see the new SSD either. Another dead end.
• Booting with the old SSD, I was able to delete the partitions on the new SSD to start fresh and avoid the possibility of having two disks with same attributes (which I read could be a problem). I also enabled Safe Boot because one post mentioned that was a part of the process of disabling Optane/IRST - but it also said to change the BIOS to ACHI which I couldn't do.
• I searched for help with specifically upgrading from Intel Optane to that WD Blue SN5100. I downloaded the Acronis cloning tool from SanDisk and created an Acronis Media Recovery bootable USB. Using it, I was able to successfully clone the old Optane SSD to the SN5100. It even matched all the partition sizes except for putting the extra space into the Windows system partition.
• I installed the SN5100 into the NVM slot in the laptop and it booted up...
• ...until I turned off safe mode. It would not boot, reporting same error.
• Cloning that partition allowed it boot again. So I was convinced it was a Windows configuration issue, not a hardware or driver problem.
• Here's when I learned about re-enabling the old F8 boot menu feature. 
• I ended up uninstalling two drivers whose name included "Optane" found in the Software Components section of device manager.
• Rebooted first in safe mode, then in normal mode. And that all worked.

This probably should not have been this difficult and time-consuming. But I only get into these kinds of PC problems when I'm trying to fix a problem, and it's a lot more complicated than it used to be.

Lloyd