No Boot Device Found on external usb with old SSD

[fred1015]

Trying to install a new Samsung 960 EVO M.2 1 Tb hard drive on my Dell Latitude E7470 laptop with Windows 10, but my Dell won't recognize the old drive in an external USB 3.0 case. I intended to boot up with the old drive in the USB case, then clone the old drive onto the new Samsung using Macrium software. I already cloned the old SSD onto an external drive using Macrium and it worked fine (I also tried booting off the cloned USB drive but got same result: "No Boot Device found.").

Here's what I've done:

Removed the old 128 Gb SSD (SATA) and installed it in a Startech USB 3.0 to M.2 enclosure. Installed the new Samsung (PCLe) in the Dell laptop computer.

Checked the Startech USB with old SSD drive installed on my desktop computer, and the desktop recognizes the drive and shows all my files.

The Dell laptop also does show the new Samsung hard drive (PCle), so both hardware installations seem to be OK.

Booted up the Dell, went into bios settings (F2) and changed from UETI to Legacy settings, then went to the one time boot menu (F10) and selected USB as the primary boot drive.

I get two messages when trying to boot using the USB with old SSD:

PXE-E61: Media test failure, check cable
PXE-M0F: Exiting Intel Boot Agent
No Boot Device Found, press any key to reboot the machine

There's nothing wrong with the USB cable (confirmed with desktop test), but I tried another cable just to be sure (same result).

I do have the Windows 10 media, and can reload, then load Dell settings, software, files, etc., but I am trying to avoid this by just cloning the existing SSD onto the new one.

Help!

 

[hang-the-9]

You are going about this the wrong way, you can't boot Windows with an external drive like that using your old drive.

Leave the drive inside the laptop, connect your new one as an external. Make a boot disk from whatever utility you will be using to clone the drive, boot off that disk. Then using the utility clone your drive to the new one. Swap drives, boot system off the new derive.