[SOLVED] Need fr help with cloned SSD not showing up in BIOS

[Sunshine I]

So on my laptop with 2 sata drive bays, I cloned my HDD to the new SSD. Cloning went great. I took the original (source) HDD out of the laptop after shutdown. I then started it up and it booted PERFECTLY on the new SSD.

I then took the old HDD and hooked it up via SATA onto my desktop, and formatted it in disk management. Then I shut my desktop down, and disconnected the HDD from my desktop and but it back in the laptop. Suddenly, when I turned my laptop back on hoping to have an extra storage device on a working laptop, Now, My SSD is completely undiscoverable in BIOS, and im stuck in a boot loop because it thinks there is no OS. The HDD is formatted so theres no way to boot off of that. I took the SSD out of the laptop, hooked it back up to the desktop via SATA and found that all the personal files and boot files are all still in there, but for some reason it just isnt bootable nor discoverable by the legacy or UEFI Bios. Both drives work perfectly on my desktop. I highly doubt they are corrupted.

What did I do wrong and what should I do now?

 

[The_Prophecy]

Sounds like a UEFI vs CSM booting issue in the laptop? What is the make/model of the laptop? We need a bit more info on it before we can do much more here.

 

[Sunshine I]

Thank you for your willingness to help!

The laptop is a Dell Inspiron 7720-
CPU is 2.3-GHz Intel Core i7-3610QM, 8gb Ram, Intel HD Graphics 4000.
The SSD is a Silicon Power 1TB SSD 3D NAND A55 SLC Cache Performance Boost SATA III 2.5".
The HDD is a Seagate Samsung Spinpoint M8 ST1000LM024 (HN-M101MBB/EX2) 1TB 5400 RPM 8MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 2.5".

 

[SkyNetRising]

I then took the old HDD and hooked it up via SATA onto my desktop, and formatted it in disk management.

Can you show screenshot from Disk Management (with old HDD connected) ?
(upload screenshot to imgur.com and post link)

 

[Sunshine I]

for sure

https://imgur.com/a/bUFgLgO

View: https://imgur.com/a/bUFgLgO


So, I cant do anything with these other 6 partitions. No idea why. (Theres no option to delete/format/shrink etc.) but the New Volume (F: )is formatted and it lets me modify that partition.

Are those partitions the problem maybe? If so, Is there a way to remove them, or is this specific HDD worthless for this laptop because it will always mess with the Master Boot Record?

follow up question- Is there a way to make the SSD that still has all the boot files on it, BOOTABLE again?

 

[Cyb3rTech]

Are those partitions the problem maybe? If so, Is there a way to remove them, or is this specific HDD worthless for this laptop because it will always mess with the Master Boot Record?

Well It looks like old HDD might be problem, which one is SSD? Disk 3? if so remove DIsk 2 (old HDD) then turn on Power

 

[SkyNetRising]

Your screenshot doesn't show all the drives btw.
So Disk 2 - is the HDD from laptop. Right?

So, I cant do anything with these other 6 partitions. No idea why.
Are those partitions the problem maybe? If so, Is there a way to remove them?

The problem is, this drive still has bootloader partition (EFI System).
Use diskpart utility to clean the drive.

diskpart​

list disk​

select disk 2​

list partition​

(make sure you have selected correct drive, next command removes everything from it )​

clean​

create partition primary​

format fs=ntfs quick​

assign letter=F​

exit​

follow up question- Is there a way to make the SSD that still has all the boot files on it, BOOTABLE again?

There shouldn't be any problem with your SSD. It still should be bootable, if you boot your laptop with it and no other drives connected.

 

[onespeedbiker]

FYI, Windows 10 Disk Manager will not allow you to delete system partitions. You have to use Diskpart or aftermarket partition software. Further, as mentioned your ssd should boot fine after you remove the hdd and equally as well once the system/boot partition(s) are deleted from the hdd.

 

[Sunshine I]

I will do the diskpart thing for sure. That makes alot of sense. Ill let you know how that goes.

The reason Im not sure about the ssd being bootable is because (sry i should have said this earlier) after nothing was being recognized, I DID take out the HDD and left just the ssd in there and the laptop wasnt booting on it at all either. I was stuck in a boot loop and it kept saying theres no OS. In legacy and UEFI mode as well, nothing was showing up as bootable when I had JUST the ssd in there... I then tested em both on my desktop and they both still worked, the HDD was formatted tho, and the SSD still had everything on there. For some reason though, the SSD just wasnt bootable and I dont know how to make it bootable again.

 

[Sunshine I]

https://imgur.com/a/KKlOuZK

View: https://imgur.com/a/KKlOuZK


So the Diskpart thing worked. The HDD now has 1 NTFS Healthy Primary Partition. Thank you for teaching me how to do that SkyNetRising . It should be just fine as an extra storage now that the EFI System partition is gone.

Sorry for the confusion on which drives are which. You are looking at disk management from the perspective of my desktop.

-Disk 0 in the photo above is said HDD that is now good to go. Note that it got renamed from (F: ) to (E: ) after Diskpart (because of the Cloned ssd already being (F: ) i think?)
-Disk 2 is the SSD that is in question. it is a clone of the old HDD, hence all the partitions that were on the HDD before diskpart...
-Disk 3 is my M.2 drive for my desktop so it has nothing to do with this.
-ignore disk 1 as well. thats another desktop ssd.

So I put just the SSD back in the laptop to make sure, and It says no OS detected everytime no matter what device in the boot order I choose so yea. No bueno. In the photo above I'm noticing that there is no partition on disk 2 that says boot on it. I think that got changed when I reinserted the HDD with the partitions on it that I didnt know about. because it was working perfectly right before i put the HDD back in there. I even rebooted it with just the SSD about 5 times and signed in and everything worked flawlessly.

So, Is there a way to make it bootable again?

 

[SkyNetRising]

So, Is there a way to make it bootable again?

OS is installed in UEFI on your SSD.
So you have to put Windows Boot Manager as first in BIOS boot order.
If you try to boot legacy boot entry, you'll get "Operating System not found" error.

 

[Sunshine I]

https://imgur.com/a/NOc3Hef

View: https://imgur.com/a/NOc3Hef


Wow! Ok awesome. I set it to UEFI and moved Windows Boot Manager to the 1st priority. Then got this recovery screen. Thats progress in my book cuz I was getting nothing everywhere else. This is my first time seeing a screen like this. Im assuming I'll need to make a windows 10 bootable USB to move forward? Got any advice on what I am looking forward to next or what I need to do? Thank you so much for your help

 

[SkyNetRising]

You need to boot from windows installation media (same version as installed windows).
So, if you have windows 10 installed, then you need windows 10 installation media.

Boot from windows installation media into command prompt and use bcdboot command to fix bootloader.
Command syntax:

bcdboot C:\windows /s H:​

( C: windows partition - 943GB , H: bootloader partition - 500MB EFI System)

Note. In windows installation environment drive letters can be different. Bootloader partition may not have drive letter assigned, then you need to assign it.

If you can't figure out correct command parameters then execute following commands and show screen output:

diskpart​

list disk​

select disk 0​

list partition​

list volume​

 

[SkyNetRising]

BTW you can get into recovery environment by pressing F1.
Then no windows installation media is necessary.

 

[Sunshine I]

Ok, so pressing F1 just kept bringing me back to this exact recovery page for some reason so I made a Win 10 USB bootable media.

Booted recovery environment, went to repair your pc, advanced options, command prompt.

I did the bottom section of code you sent me to check the volume names first because I didnt wanna change anything unless I was absolutely sure. So it looks like Disk 0 is the HDD-only one partition, but still has an OS volume D?...or maybe not because the hdd is only 931gb in size, not 943gb...

Disk 1 is the SSD And the OS is on Volume D as well... 943gb, the same size as partition 5... So i took some screen shots. I exited out and turned off my computer without changing anything so I could ask you for sure what to do, because I'm a little out of my element at this point and I dont wanna do the wrong thing. Note there are 2 pictures here

https://imgur.com/a/Gkaiuyr

View: https://imgur.com/a/Gkaiuyr


So what do I type in the command prompt the next time I start the computer?

 

[SkyNetRising]

Execute this in command prompt exit from command prompt and reboot your pc. Should boot right into windows.

list disk​

select disk 1​

list partition​

select partition 1​

(select 500MB system partition)​

assign letter=H​

exit​

bcdboot D:\windows /s H:​

 

[Sunshine I]

THANK YOU SO MUCH. This command worked perfect, and everything starts up quickly, just like it should, and with the old HDD as backup storage! Thank you!!!!!