HP Laptop BIOS / EUFI restricts Boot drive selection - Any way around it

[bluechipwi]

Purchased HP 350 G1 (K4L55UT#ABA) Notebook Intel Core i7 from Newegg.
Need two drives in laptop. DVD slot (extremely slim). No DVD/HDD adapters available to mount a HDD in DVD bay.
But the motherboard does provide a mSata slot.

SO THIS IS WHAT I DID
Used Samsung Migration software and cloned OS to a Samsung mSata 250GB.
Mounted mSata in mSata slot.
Booted-up laptop, went into BIOS/EUFI and found the following ....
The only phrase in BIOS is "Notebook Drive", allowing boot order listing for DVD and attached USB devices."
The BIOS does NOT allow drive selection, controlling this by NOT displaying mSata port-1 option.
Oh no, this not good.
Shut down again, REMOVED HDD (port-0). Reboot into BIOS, again no ability to target mSata at port-1.
Closed BIOS into boot up process and Laptop STOPPED at "No Boot Drive"

QUESTION
If I remove the HDD which came with laptop (has OS) and CLEAN INSTALL (W7-Pro) to mSata at BIOS port-1, will BIOS now be directed to use BIOS port-1 as "Notebook Drive" and boot up laptop??
The installed BIOS/EUFI is "InsydeH20 - BIOS version F.12

ANY comments, suggestions, insight would be appreciated.

Thanks
Dennis

 

[casper1973]

I usually find disabling Secure Boot and enabling CSM (Compatibility Support Module) does the trick in situations like this.

I'm not familiar with that BIOS so you will have to look around.

 

[bluechipwi]

I usually find disabling Secure Boot and enabling CSM (Compatibility Support Module) does the trick in situations like this.

I'm not familiar with that BIOS so you will have to look around.

Thanks for your reply.
First back ground info - This laptop delivered with w7-Pro installed AND includes a w8.1 update Disk.
This was chosen because laptop will be used for business.

Responding to your Solution.
The above laptop BIOS was delivered with the following DEFAULT settings....
Secure Boot - DISABLED
CMS ------------ ENABLED

At no time have the above default settings been changed.

 

[bluechipwi]

Pulled out primary drive, installed mSata 250GB and DVD booted into w7 Pro-x64 Install disk.
Install successful (loaded no additional drivers), checked Disk Management and windows seen the mSata on Disk-0. mSata displayed both System Reserve and (C\) partition, which displayed Healthy Boot, page file, Crash Dump, Primary Partition.
So I shut down and powered up, and stop screen "Boot Device Not Found".
Any suggestions where to go from here ??