[SOLVED] Having trouble booting an Alienware 15 R3 after adding a new M.2 NVME harddrive

Oct 18, 2021
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I installed a second larger capacity SSD M.2 NVME drive in my wife's computer. I cloned her first drive to the new drive and changed the drive letter to C: in the registry. Everything works well and I can boot to the new drive by using the Dell F12 boot menu at start up. It show two UEFI Boot managers. One just says UEFI Boot Manager, the other says UEFI
Boot Manager with the new drive capacity on it which I can boot to using the f12 startup option. If I boot to the BIOS (hitting F2 repeatedly), the boot menu only shows one UEFI Boot Manager (and two network options). I have tried legacy and disabling secure boot and the only way I can boot the computer to Windows 10 is by using the F12 key on startup. I have turned the old SSD to a data disk but it still has all the windows 10 partitions. Please help as my wife is not happy!!!
 
Solution
If you're just going to do a reinstall, just do it.
Don't bother with trying to "fix" this borked up clone.


For the old OS drive, reconnect that after. You can clean ALL partitions on it from the commandline function diskpart, and the clean command.
Oct 18, 2021
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When you are in windows, could you go into disk management and post that page please?
Sorry, I was out of town yesterday. Thanks for responding. Here is a screenshot of Disk Management. Disk 2 is the Operating system. Disk 1 is the old Operating system I converted to a Data drive.
I could not attach the screenshot so I did it through dropbox. Let me know if that didn't workDisk Management
 
Oct 18, 2021
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With the Dell Alienware I can get to boot options in two ways. At bootup, I can hit F2 repeatedly to get into the BIOS. In the Boot section of the BIOS, Windows Boot Manager is listed as #1. It does not show the EVO Plus disk like it does in the Boot Menu. If it showed here, I could easily assign it as #1. The other way is by hitting F12 which gets me into the Boot menu. In that menu, it list UEFI Options:
Windows Boot Manager
OnBoard NIC (IPV4)
OnBoard NIC (IVP6)
HDD1 - Windows Boot Manager (Samsung SSD 970 EVO Plus 500 GB)

If I select Windows Boot Manager it will try to boot Disk 1 (F: Drive) but I no longer have Windows 10 on it as it is now a data drive). If I pick the HDD1 option, it boots up fine to Disk 2 (C: drive) which has Window 10 on it.

Hope that is clear.

John
 
Oct 18, 2021
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In the context of cloning from one drive to another, this is NEVER necessary, and likely a major factor in this problem.
As I was researching how to move the operating system to the larger SSD drive, it was recommended to change the drive name to C: because that's where programs are going to look for things necessary to run. Should I change it back to F: and the old drive back to C:??
 

USAFRet

Titan
Moderator
As I was researching how to move the operating system to the larger SSD drive, it was recommended to change the drive name to C: because that's where programs are going to look for things necessary to run. Should I change it back to F: and the old drive back to C:??
Proper clone procedure would have resulted in that drive being the C, with no modification by you.
Whoever told you to do that was 100% wrong.

If you return the system back to original configuration, without the new drive, does it boot up?
 
Oct 18, 2021
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Proper clone procedure would have resulted in that drive being the C, with no modification by you.
Whoever told you to do that was 100% wrong.

If you return the system back to original configuration, without the new drive, does it boot up?
Unfortunately, there is tons of misinformation on the internet. I will give that a try when I have some time. Luckily, if I need to, I can do a complete reinstall of Windows 10 if needed as my wife doesn't have much on her computer. If I decide to do that, is there anything I should do with the disk the F: drive is on (the original windows 10 disk)? I remember from my past experiences that it is tough to get rid of those old windows partitions. I think I was able to get rid of the contents but I couldn't extend the F: drive to include them.
 

USAFRet

Titan
Moderator
If you're just going to do a reinstall, just do it.
Don't bother with trying to "fix" this borked up clone.


For the old OS drive, reconnect that after. You can clean ALL partitions on it from the commandline function diskpart, and the clean command.
 
Solution

USAFRet

Titan
Moderator
For future reference on cloning....


-----------------------------
Specific steps for a successful clone operation:
-----------------------------
Verify the actual used space on the current drive is significantly below the size of the new SSD
Both drives must be the same partitioning scheme, either MBR or GPT
Download and install Macrium Reflect (or Samsung Data Migration, if a Samsung SSD)
If you are cloning from a SATA drive to PCIe/NVMe, you may need to install the relevant driver for this new NVMe/PCIe drive.
Power off
Disconnect ALL drives except the current C and the new SSD
Power up
Run the Macrium Reflect (or Samsung Data Migration)
Select ALL the partitions on the existing C drive

[Ignore this section if using the SDM. It does this automatically]
If you are going from a smaller drive to a larger, by default, the target partition size will be the same as the Source. You probably don't want that
You can manipulate the size of the partitions on the target (larger)drive
Click on "Cloned Partition Properties", and you can specifiy the resulting partition size, to even include the whole thing
[/end ignore]

Click the 'Clone' button
Wait until it is done
When it finishes, power off
Disconnect ALL drives except for the new SSD. This is not optional.
This is to allow the system to try to boot from ONLY the SSD
Swap the SATA cables around so that the new drive is connected to the same SATA port as the old drive
Power up, and verify the BIOS boot order
If good, continue the power up

It should boot from the new drive, just like the old drive.
Maybe reboot a time or two, just to make sure.

If it works, and it should, all is good.

Later, reconnect the old drive and wipe all partitions on it.
This will probably require the commandline diskpart function, and the clean command.

Ask questions if anything is unclear.
-----------------------------
 
Oct 18, 2021
15
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If you're just going to do a reinstall, just do it.
Don't bother with trying to "fix" this borked up clone.


For the old OS drive, reconnect that after. You can clean ALL partitions on it from the commandline function diskpart, and the clean command.
Yeah, That sounds like the thing to do. I have used diskpart before but I think I had trouble because it was an OEM Windows install. When I get to that stage if I'm having any issues, I'll check back. I think I was only able to get the old windows recovery partitions to unallocated space and couldn't extend it onto the reformatted C: drive.
 

USAFRet

Titan
Moderator
Yeah, That sounds like the thing to do. I have used diskpart before but I think I had trouble because it was an OEM Windows install. When I get to that stage if I'm having any issues, I'll check back. I think I was only able to get the old windows recovery partitions to unallocated space and couldn't extend it onto the reformatted C: drive.
diskpart is not concerned with OEM or otherwise.
What it cannot do it delete the partition where its own OS is running. On a secondary drive, no problem, no matter what is/was on it.
 
Oct 18, 2021
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diskpart is not concerned with OEM or otherwise.
What it cannot do it delete the partition where its own OS is running. On a secondary drive, no problem, no matter what is/was on it.
Ok, I'll be working on that tomorrow. I looked back at the drives on my computer and it looks like I was able to get rid of all the old windows partitions. Maybe it was one of my backup drives I was thinking of. It has old Windows partitions on it and maybe I was not able to get rid of them because I didn't want to lose the data on it (it was a long time ago). No need to respond. I'll update after I work on my wife's rig tomorrow.