[SOLVED] Cloned new SSD from m.2, neither appear in bios?

[NKT]

I have searched and searched for the answer to this, and it is starting to annoy!
So, I had an HDD in my MSI PE70, and upgraded to M.2 some years ago. However, it was only a ½Tb, and soon got full. Since I was using the 1 Tb HDD for things like VMs, I decided to upgrade that to a full 2.5" SSD. Seeing the prices, I went for a 2Tb SSD in 2.5" format.
So, the issue: I cloned my M.2 to my new SSD. Now, I can boot from either (Windows 10) but only if I physically remove the other drive. If I install both, I can't get anything to happen.

"legacy" won't boot either, then UEFI doesn't see either drive, and I get asked for boot media. Removing either one works...

What I need to do I think is tell Windows that a drive isn't bootable? I don't want to reformat the m.2, but I might have to. Ideas?

(Yes, I know the M.2 is slightly faster. I might upgrade that if I notice it being an issue. I could get a 4tb one of those in another few years as prices continue to drop! But it currently seems like the SSD is about 10 seconds slower to boot into Windows 10, at 30 (from 20) seconds)

 

[Lutfij]

Welcome to the forums, newcomer!

If you're working with both SSD's, why didn't you leave the M.2 alone and have the 2.5" drive as a storage drive? You can actually migrate your User's folder over to the larger SSD. To also add, how is it that you've populated a 500GB SSD? App's and OS alone or are there other files?

Yes the M.2 is the drive to have your OS on since it's faster. The 2.5" would be best off as a storage drive. What BIOS version are you on for your laptop? You might want to format the OS off the drive you don't want the OS on.

 

[USAFRet]

Please show us a screencap of your Disk Management window.
Bit confused as to what is on which drive.

After the clone process, you really really do not want both drives to be bootable.
The old drive should have been wiped completely.

More questions to follow.

 

[NKT]

I wanted a larger Windows partition so stuff doesn't keep running out of space. With 32Gb of RAM, just the hibernation takes up over 5% of the disc.

The clone didn't wipe the M.2, because why would I risk that if the clone hadn't worked perfectly?

Yes, both drives are now marked as the boot drive. That's what I surely need to change. Acronis, which did the clone, is pretty useless - the only option available from their USB boot creation (which has wiped the USB drive) was to then wipe the m.2. However, that at least shows that it's not a hardware thing, as from USB I can see both drives.

What I don't get is that I can't just use something to access the partition and change something, so I can just boot into windows and see both drives. Is this possible?

Please show us a screencap of your Disk Management window.

It will only show one drive or the other. The machine fails to detect either drive when both SSDs are present. As such, I can't get to the Disk Management. There's nothing shown in the BIOS either, unless I set it to Legacy boot, which, of course, won't!

To also add, how is it that you've populated a 500GB SSD?

Yeah, I need to figure that out too. Word had 3.5Gb of "temp" files, that sort of thing. After removing a couple of Gb of stuff what felt like every week, I went for a hardware solution. I need to install some big software for some blockchain/Haskell stuff I'm meant to be learning (course started ~8 weeks ago now, and I'm not even at the "all required software installed" stage yet! ), and that's about 32Gb total, and I already uninstalled loads of other stuff. Bigger iron seemed like the better option all around.
I want to get the stuff off the other, old, HDD too, onto my machine on SSD too. VMs, etc. That'll speed those up too.

 

[USAFRet]

The clone operation does not wipe the original Source drive.
But, you really need to do that yourself.

Having 2 mostly identical bootable drive leads to problems and confusion.

Put the system back to original configuration. Without the new drive.
Does it work?

 

[NKT]

Yes, both drives work separately. Just together the EUFI gets very upset.
I'll just nuke the m.2!

 

[NKT]

I figured it out. I used a live USB, then deleted the m.2 EFI partition, and bingo, everything is as I thought it should be. Got a nasty red warning BIOS screen saying the partition was altered, but that's fine. I'm in Windows again, so I can reassemble this laptop and stop having to pull bits out to do work!