Question Having difficulty moving Windows 10 to my new internal SSD

[00000AMillion]

Hi there!
My girlfriend has an Acer Nitro 5 laptop (model: AN515-53-52FA) and I got her an internal SSD for Christmas to help speed things up. The SSD I got her is a 250gb Crucial NVMe M.2 SSD, which I checked and is compatible with this laptop model. I installed it and, after a little trial and error, got Windows to recognize it in File Explorer. So, right now it's completely empty and formatted as NTFS. I'm trying to to a clean install of Windows 10 onto it and make it the laptop's boot drive, but my BIOS does not detect this new SSD at all. Both File Explorer and Disk Management can see the SSD without issue, but for some reason I can't select it as a boot drive in the BIOS.

I've tried to do this both with the current 1TB drive still in the laptop and with no drives except the SSD installed. As per several guides on this, I made sure to set the SATA mode to AHCI, but I suppose since this is an M.2 drive that doesn't make a difference.

Furthermore, the USB bootable media that I'm trying to install onto the SSD doesn't show up in the bootable drives, either.

So right now I'm at a complete loss as to how to proceed, and any help is much appreciated.

Other specs:

• i5-8300H CPU
• 8GB of RAM
• Current OS: Windows 10 Home, Version 2004, build # 19041.685

 

[RealBeast]

Is the M.2 drive GPT formatted? If not open a command prompt window and type:
diskpart <enter>
list disk <enter>
select disk n <enter> where n is the M.2 in the list result
clean <enter>
convert gpt <enter>
exit <enter>

You can then do a clean Windows install on it, W10 will format it before starting.

 

[00000AMillion]

I have actually, though not from command prompt. I did it from disk management,.and made sure it was GPT. I can try again though. Like I said, the drive is totally empty and is recognized by File Explorer and Disk Management, just not the BIOS. So weird. I'll report back.

 

[00000AMillion]

Is the M.2 drive GPT formatted? If not open a command prompt window and type:
diskpart <enter>
list disk <enter>
select disk n <enter> where n is the M.2 in the list result
clean <enter>
convert gpt <enter>
exit <enter>

You can then do a clean Windows install on it, W10 will format it before starting.

Alright so here's what popped up. When I booted up my computer at first, this popped up. Apparently, this means that the drive is about to die, which is very strange because it's new and it seems to work fine as far as extra storage goes (BIOS issues notwithstanding).

https://imgur.com/4Bmjo3x

I did the command prompt disk format and I noticed that it seems the available space it lists for the disks is very small? I might be reading that wrong though.

https://imgur.com/Jux0m6P

The formatting process did not work, unfortunately. Here's an album of all the menus from the BIOS, if that helps:

https://imgur.com/a/mvDqUuQ

View: https://imgur.com/a/mvDqUuQ

 

[RealBeast]

While you could try other stuff, I would just RMA it rather than waste any more of your time. I had to RMA a new Samsung M.2 about 6 months ago.

 

[geofelt]

I think crucial may have a ssd migration app that will move your C drive to the ssd.
If you do try to install windows clean on the m.2 drive, disconnect the old HDD or windows will put a recovery partition on it, making it impossible to boot if you ever remove the hdd.

If that were a samsung ssd, there is a simple app to move your windows C drive to their ssd.
Here is a link to the manual and app:

Tool & Software Download | Samsung Semiconductor Global

Download various software related to your product, including Samsung Magician, designed for use with Samsung's memory products, and find related information.

www.samsung.com

 

[madmatt30]

You've got sata mode set in raid which is probably why your optical drive isn't showing as bootable.

The bios is seeing that crucial drive no issue.

It will however not show up in the bootable drives list until there's a boot partition actually on it.

 

[00000AMillion]

You've got sata mode set in raid which is probably why your optical drive isn't showing as bootable.

The bios is seeing that crucial drive no issue.

It will however not show up in the bootable drives list until there's a boot partition actually on it.

I have the SATA mode set that way because I found that if I have it set to ACHI, then the laptop doesn't boot up properly (it runs diagnostics because it thinks there's a problem, and then puts me on a blue screen that says "Your computer did not start properly" and gives me the options to either restart or click through Advanced options.)

However, your comment about a boot partition is interesting. Do I have to create a boot partition through disk manager or something first? If so, how do I do that?

 

[00000AMillion]

The bios is seeing that crucial drive no issue.

Also, the drive that you see in the BIOS screenshots is the main HDD, by the way.

 

[madmatt30]

Also, the drive that you see in the BIOS screenshots is the main HDD, by the way.

You're trying to install Windows to the crucial surely?? From either a USB stick or from dvd??

Then you need the sata mode set to ahci!

Of course it won't boot because it's likely been installed to the original hard drive in ide mode.

Set to ahci, save, restart, go back to bios and you should get boot order allowing to boot from other devices.

Regarding the boot partition, its creating by the windows install procedure, you didn't need to format the crucial drive from Windows, it serves no purpose at all doing that if you're installing it as a boot drive

The crucial drive is clearly shown as hdd0 in the second screen shot you posted.

 

[00000AMillion]

You're trying to install Windows to the crucial surely?? From either a USB stick or from dvd??

Then you need the sata mode set to ahci!

Of course it won't boot because it's likely been installed to the original hard drive in ide mode.

Set to ahci, save, restart, go back to bios and you should get boot order allowing to boot from other devices.

Regarding the boot partition, its creating by the windows install procedure, you didn't need to format the crucial drive from Windows, it serves no purpose at all doing that if you're installing it as a boot drive

The crucial drive is clearly shown as hdd0 in the second screen shot you posted.

The drive directly under "Boot Priority Order" is the main 1tb HDD (the HGST one), and not the Crucial SSD.

If I set to ACHI, save, restart, the Crucial SSD still doesn't show up. I should be seeing both it and the HGST hard drive in the boot list and would be able to switch their positions, but that is not the case.

By "creating the windows install procedure" do you mean create an image of Windows (through Windows Media Creation tool) and putting that onto the Crucial SSD?