PC continues to boot from HDD after directing it to boot from Cloned SSD in BIOS

[Andrew Dahl]

I have a weird one. I have an older ASUS P5QL Pro motherboard and I just installed an SSD. I cloned my HDD over to the SSD and went to boot. I set the SSD as the primary boot drive in BIOS, but when it started, it loaded the original HDD install and my SSD is seen as drive A: in My Computer (Windows 8 btw). I then shut down and disconnected my two HDDs physically.

I booted again, and this time it managed to load from the new SSD after a quick Automatic Repair.

I then shut down and reconnected my HDDs. Again I setup BIOS to boot from the SSD, but it reverted to the HDD install instead.

Any suggestions?

 

[i7Baby]

You can't have two drives with the OS on. Often causes problems. Take the data off the HDD then wipe it - format it - and reinstall apps and copy the data back.

 

[nukemaster]

Please disconnect the hard drive to ensure it is functioning off the SSD only before erasing any data.

If it does not boot, your boot loader may be pointing at the old location(hard drive). this happens sometimes and can generally be fixed with a program called EASYBCD

It is high recommended that you edit from another drive, so boot the hard drive and unhide the system reserved partition on the SSD. instead of replacing the existing setup add a new entry(add the SSD's drive letter even when it is not c : . Name it something like SSD Windows) to the boot menu instead or removing what it has already(this way if things go bad you can still boot the HDD even from the SSD boot loader).

This all assumes you have the dual partition setup(System Reserved + OS partition). Some systems have the boot loader on the actual windows partition, but it is not too common.

Once you think you have it all working try to shut down and remove the HDD again. If it all loads then you should be safe to remove all the files from the HDD. Some users like to just shrink/hide the Windows partition on the HDD and leave it in case of emergence(like an extra copy of Windows if the SSD fails.).

 

[Andrew Dahl]

What is the best way to wipe the old drive? I can't use Format when I have booted from that drive.

Also, my SSD causes my PC to shut down just after displaying the Win 8 logo when plugged into SATA ports 1 or 2. If I have it in port 3, it boots just fine. I can't find any documentation saying that ports 1 & 2 are special.

 

[Andrew Dahl]

I seem to have found the solution. I connected the original HDDs to SATA port 5 & 6. Then when I rebooted it picked my SSD to boot from.

Everything seems to be working at the moment (other than the SSD not working in slot 1 or 2, but that isn't much of a concern)

 

[nukemaster]

You can format the old drive once you are booting from the SSD(you can just remove the partitions and make a new one.).

The port issue may be because of a bios setting or if your board has more than one sata controller(it is common to see some extra ports from a 3rd party controller). Windows does not always want to jump from controller to controller.