Moving W10 Boot drive to new SSD

[PopeCheese]

Hello all,

I just purchased a new laptop, Acer Aspire E 15 E5-575-33BM and I am attempting to move my windows install to a new 250GB M.2 SSD. I have successfully cloned the drive to the SSD and can boot from it, but ONLY if the original HDD is not connected.

I have the SSD set as 1 in the UEFI boot order and the HDD set as the last option. Before cloning the SSD and attempting to boot to it, I also could not boot to a USB with a W10 iso installed.

Does anyone know why this is happening? I know the SSD is good to go because I am currently using it now on this laptop without the HDD connected. Essentially no matter what I do, the HDD forces the PC to boot onto it.

Thanks in advance.

 

[SkyNetRising]

Can you post screenshot from Disk Management (when HDD and SSD is connected)?

Basically in UEFI system, if you have multiple EFI system partitions, you have to specify from which one to boot up.
Your HDD has EFI system partition and SSD has it. In BIOS boot options there will be 2 entries of Windows Boot Manager. They might look the same, but each one represents a different storage device.

Another way of solving this would be deleting EFI system Partition from HDD.

 

[PopeCheese]

Can you post screenshot from Disk Management (when HDD and SSD is connected)?

Basically in UEFI system, if you have multiple EFI system partitions, you have to specify from which one to boot up.
Your HDD has EFI system partition and SSD has it. In BIOS boot options there will be 2 entries of Windows Boot Manager. They might look the same, but each one represents a different storage device.

Another way of solving this would be deleting EFI system Partition from HDD.

There is only one instance of Windows Boot Manager in the boot list. Also, I'm not able to format the windows partition on the HDD if that is what you mean by deleting the EFI system partition.

I'm at work now, I made that post right before going to bed last night, but I wonder if I hooked the HDD up to my desk top if I could format it there. I'm assuming I can't format it on the laptop because the laptop is running off it. Would that work?

 

[SkyNetRising]

There is only one instance of Windows Boot Manager in the boot list. Also, I'm not able to format the windows partition on the HDD if that is what you mean by deleting the EFI system partition.

I wonder if I hooked the HDD up to my desk top if I could format it there. I'm assuming I can't format it on the laptop because the laptop is running off it. Would that work?

See attached picture - there's 100MB EFI system partition, bootloader lives there.
Any system should have only one of those, but you have 2, when both hdd and SSD is connected.
Yes - you can connect the drive to your desktop pc and either wipe the drive clean or just delete EFI system partition
(formatting windows partition will not fix your problem, btw).

 

[PopeCheese]

There is only one instance of Windows Boot Manager in the boot list. Also, I'm not able to format the windows partition on the HDD if that is what you mean by deleting the EFI system partition.

I wonder if I hooked the HDD up to my desk top if I could format it there. I'm assuming I can't format it on the laptop because the laptop is running off it. Would that work?

See attached picture - there's 100MB EFI system partition, bootloader lives there.
Any system should have only one of those, but you have 2, when both hdd and SSD is connected.
Yes - you can connect the drive to your desktop pc and either wipe the drive clean or just delete EFI system partition
(formatting windows partition will not fix your problem, btw).

Well, I was attempting to format the entire drive, not just one partition, which I would have thought would effectively accomplish the same thing.

I will give this another go this evening. Thank you for your help so far.

 

[SkyNetRising]

Well, I was attempting to format the entire drive, not just one partition, which I would have thought would effectively accomplish the same thing.

You can't format a drive. Drive contains partitions, you can format a partition only.
If the a drive contained a single partition, then you could say, that formatting the only partition is the same as formatting entire drive.
But, if a drive contains multiple partitions, then you have to clean the drive, repartition it and then format partition(s).