[SOLVED] M.2 PCIe SSD not showing up in disk management or device manager after OS migration from HDD

Nov 15, 2020
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I bought my brother an SSD for his computer after I had bought one for myself and loved the improvements. I stayed on the phone with him while on screen share to walk him through migrating the OS from the HDD to the new SSD. I used the exact same process I used for my own computer but got drastically different results. Before migrating the OS his new SSD appeared in disk management. After the migration it disappeared, no longer the option to initialize the drive, make partitions, or assign a drive letter. The drive does however appear in the BIOS and is available to be selected as the boot drive, however the computer doesn't boot like it's on an SSD. Any help would be great after 6 hours of tinkering for nothing to change.

The specific SSD is a WD BLACK SN750 NVME 1TB

His motherboard is a compatible Gigabyte X570 ud
 
Solution
It could be that the boot configuration is damaged.
You need to focus on booting into windows 10 with M2 SSD plugged in.

  1. Manually select P1 HDD during boot instead of windows boot manager.
  2. Use windows 10 installation media to boot into Windows 10.

3. Boot into Windows 10 without M2 SSD plugged in.
Using Powershell in administrator mode rebuilt the boot configuration using the bcdboot command. https://neosmart.net/wiki/winman/bcdboot/
Then try to boot with M2 SSD plugged in.
What did you use to clone the OS to the new SSD?

What do you mean it doesn't boot like its on an SSD? Do you mean it wont boot? Is it slow to boot? Be more specific of the actual issues.

Be sure you have the M.2 Slot configured correctly in the BIOS., it may be on PCIe4 mode.
 
Nov 15, 2020
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To clone the OS I used a program called MiniTool Partition Wizard

It's a very slow boot, the BIOS says it's the boot drive, but it's acting like it's booting on the hard drive

For the life of me I can't find any way to change the mode of a M.2 slot on a gigabyte board, couldn't find any info online either
 

USAFRet

Titan
Moderator
Put the system back together as it was originally.
Original HDD, no NVMe.
Does it boot properly?

If so, then redo the clone thing.
Just like this:
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Specific steps for a successful clone operation:
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Verify the actual used space on the current drive is significantly below the size of the new SSD
Download and install Macrium Reflect (or Samsung Data Migration, if a Samsung SSD)
If you are cloning from a SATA drive to PCIe/NVMe, 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

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

Click the 'Clone' button
Wait until it is done
When it finishes, power off
Disconnect ALL drives except for the new SSD
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.
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Nov 15, 2020
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I got my brother to take out the SSD and boot from only the hard drive and he's telling me that every game he plays is now incredibly laggy and even his discord lags.
 
Nov 15, 2020
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Okay, also I don't entirely know what you mean by "Swap the SATA cables around so that the new drive is connected to the same SATA port as the old drive". Since this is a PCIe drive I didn't think it connected through any SATA cable, but I'm assuming I'm wrong.
 

USAFRet

Titan
Moderator
Okay, also I don't entirely know what you mean by "Swap the SATA cables around so that the new drive is connected to the same SATA port as the old drive". Since this is a PCIe drive I didn't think it connected through any SATA cable, but I'm assuming I'm wrong.
That line about "SATA cables" is in there for SATA drives.
In your case, that doesn't apply. But DO disconnect the old drive at the appropriate time.
 
Nov 15, 2020
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We changed the boot order to
#1 Windows Boot Manager (P1:HDD)
#2 P1 HDD
#3 Disabled
#4 Disabled

It put us back into the loop and sent us to the page I had showed you above.
 

viktik

Distinguished
Oct 7, 2013
8
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18,520
It could be that the boot configuration is damaged.
You need to focus on booting into windows 10 with M2 SSD plugged in.

  1. Manually select P1 HDD during boot instead of windows boot manager.
  2. Use windows 10 installation media to boot into Windows 10.

3. Boot into Windows 10 without M2 SSD plugged in.
Using Powershell in administrator mode rebuilt the boot configuration using the bcdboot command. https://neosmart.net/wiki/winman/bcdboot/
Then try to boot with M2 SSD plugged in.
 
Solution