SSD detected by Windows, but not available as boot device in BIOS

[BrandonMc]

So, I have a strange issue. I installed a 128GB SSD into my PC, along with a 3TB HDD. I installed Windows onto the SSD (drive C), and I use the HDD for most everything else. I noticed that the HDD had a decent chunk of unallocated space, but thought nothing of it at the time.

The other day, however, I wanted to install Ubuntu for dual-boot for something to play around with, and because my grandfather has put it on his PC (for the sake of less virus issues, etc) and I want to be able to help him out as he usually comes to me with PC issues.

Well, the reason the HDD was missing a large portion of space was because I had, unknowingly, set it as MBR instead of GUID (not something that occurred to me at the time) so I located a utility to convert the disk over to GUID without data loss. The issue was that, while Windows installed onto my SSD just fine, the boot record was put on the HDD as the motherboard does not appear to recognize the SSD as a viable boot device (it does not show up in a list of hard drives in the BIOS or as a boot device).

On a side note, Ubuntu steadfastly refused to do anything with the unallocated space, giving me an error stating that the range was too high.

While I would *like* to not have to blow everything away and reinstall my OS, I'm not completely against the idea. That seems moot, however, as my motherboard does not seem to like the idea of my SSD being the boot device. So I basically have a strange scenario where the BIOS does NOT see the hard drive (my SSD), but Windows does. As you can guess, most searches only bring up the reverse of my situation.

Hardware:
MOBO: ASUS Sabertooth X58
SSD: SanDisk SDSSDP-128G-G25
HDD: Seagate ST3000DM001
PROC: Intel i7-960

OS:
Windows 7 Ultimate SP1 (Could be Pro - not at my place to check)

 

[popatim]

1:Your motherbd doesn't work well with 3tb drives, as you are just finding out.
2: having the hdd installed when you installed windows to the ssd resulted in boot files being written to the HDD. reload the windows install media and run repair. You may have to run it 3 times for it to figure out how to fix the issue. or you can just unplug the hdd and reinstall windows again.
3: bios sata ports would need to be in ahci or ide mode for you to see the drive there. If your ports are in raid mode then you will only see the drive in the raid bios.
3b: Your motherbd also has 2 other controllers the ssd may be attached to. the other two are Jmicron and Marvel. jmicron controls the esata and the Marvell ports are the Grey sata3 (6gb/s) ports. Move the SSd to the intel ports, the marvel ports on that board are awful with SSD's. the SSD will actually be faster on the intel sata2 ports than the marvel sata3 ones. You would only see the ssd on the marvell part of the bios if its attached via sata3. (I suspect this is your 'seeing the ssd' problem.)

Cheers!

 

[BrandonMc]

Awesome tidbits there - I'll give them a go and see what I can do. Getting the boot loader wasn't the major issue, but getting the BIOS to see the SSD from the beginning was. Until I do that, doesn't do me much good to play with the bootloader

 

[BrandonMc]

So, I did the following and it now works:
1. Changed my motherboard settings to AHCI
2. Selected the SSD as my primary hard drive
3. Confirmed the SSD was in the bootable device list
4. Reinstalled Windows onto the SSD (repairs did not create a bootldr on the SSD)
5. Used a utility to convert the HDD from MBR to GUID
6. Shrank the SSD by 25 GB
7. Installed Ubuntu onto the SSD

Problem solved

 

[popatim]

My bad, I didnt mention that you still needed to have the hdd removed for that step.

Grats on getting it going! You did the hard part. ;-p