[SOLVED] Just added a second drive to Dell XPS15 [9550] and now no boot device detected

Aug 29, 2020
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Hi

I recently upgraded my Dell XPS15 [9550]'s primary M2 NVMe drive and the machine had been working fine. I then went ahead and just added a second hard drive to the rig [usign the SATA 0 connection on the motherboard. On first boot initially, Windows 10 had no trouble booting up and Windows saw both drives. I went and deleted the Partition on the second drive [a 2.5 SSD], and went and formatted it, again no issues there. I did notice that it had an EFI partition which I didn't know why so I went thru a command prompt and deleted it/formatted the drive removing that partition. Again no issue as I hadn't rebooted...yet. Upon reboot, I receive the error message that there is no bootable device. I have removed the secondary drive and still have had no success booting back into windows. Any help would be appreciated.
 
Solution
I would leave both "purple boxed" partitions alone.

They will likely be necessary for a system recovery.

Overall I have evolved into a two branched "philosophy":

1) If it is not broke, do not fix it.

2) Never let form get in the way of function. In other words it may appear cleaner, nicer, etc. to have all the drive letters in some particular scheme or order. However, I am increasingly skittish about changes for such things.

I have a roughly similar situation on a Dell desktop.

That said, my situation is different in that my C: drive is only 1/2 the size of your C: drive which means that I do not have that 227 GB of "D" sitting out there.

For the most part you would go into Disk Management and "Extend Volume" the existing C...
Aug 29, 2020
2
0
10

Hello Ralston18

Thank you for the links to the articles/suggestion, I ended up taking the previously installed M2 SSD drive and remounting it [as I had not wiped it], and then booted up successfully with it. I then went ahead and re-cloned the new M2 drive a second time, shut down the machine, swapped drives again, and [keeping the 2.5 SSD drive installed] restarted the machine, this time with success. I chose NOT to remove/delete the additional partitions, and when Windows detected the drive was getting low on available space, I let Windows delete the "previously installed" Windows files it felt were unnecessary. So far the machine has worked well, however, I am still left with the matter of having a second partition on the "primary" M2 drive, along with the 2.5 SSD. If you review the attached image, any assistance in performing what I am outlining would be appreciated.

XPS15 Disk Management
 

Ralston18

Titan
Moderator
I would leave both "purple boxed" partitions alone.

They will likely be necessary for a system recovery.

Overall I have evolved into a two branched "philosophy":

1) If it is not broke, do not fix it.

2) Never let form get in the way of function. In other words it may appear cleaner, nicer, etc. to have all the drive letters in some particular scheme or order. However, I am increasingly skittish about changes for such things.

I have a roughly similar situation on a Dell desktop.

That said, my situation is different in that my C: drive is only 1/2 the size of your C: drive which means that I do not have that 227 GB of "D" sitting out there.

For the most part you would go into Disk Management and "Extend Volume" the existing C: drive space (OS = 225GB) to include the space that is now the 227 GB D: drive.

But only after ensuring that your system is fully backed and that the backup was proven recoverable and readable.

Also:

I am moving your post/thread from Laptop Tech Support over to Storage.

We have some very good drive experts there and I will defer to their recommendations regarding your drive requirements and plans.
 
Solution