Question SSD swap, Can't boot into windows without old SSD, or use windows. Straight to BIOS.

[DivneBloodline]

I have a bunch of these old low capacity SSDs in my computer and I've been slow upgrading them over time. I've swapped out two other SSDs, and never had any issues until I replace my old 110 GB Crucial SSD. The Crucial was completely blank, I moved the few games off it months ago, and reformatted it. Hasn't been touched snice then. I don't think that information is important, but wanted to be clear it not the boot drive.

I've swapped it out with a 2TB PNY SSD. Now when I boot, it goes straight to the BIOS menu. So I figure it messed up the my boot drive settings, however it was set to boot off the correct drive. I save and exit, computer restarts, again straight to the BIOS menu again. Not sure what is happening, think I've lost my mind, and maybe I did replace my boot drive. I put the Crucial SSD in an external enclosure, and plug it into my front IO, restart my computer, and boots right into windows. I log in, and check This PC, the Crucial is completely empty, is not my boot drive. Everything is working fine, so I restart again without the Crucial drive plugged in, straight to BIOS. Restart again with the Crucial drive plugged in, normal boot, login to the desktop, everything is working fine. Out of curiosity I unplug the Crucial from my front IO, everything freezes, can't use my keyboard or mouse, nothing works. I plug it back in and everything is fine.

I don't understand, there is nothing on the drive, and don't know why my computer would be dependent on this SSD. I assuming it has to do something with the BIOS setting, but I'll be honest I don't understand the BIOS menus too well. My motherboard is an ASUS X99-Deluxe, so that the BIOS we're dealing with.

 

[jasonf2]

It is probably two things. Your boot order probably has the blank drive before the functional one. The second thing is that while you may have formatted the drive you probably didn't wipe the partitions. You more than likely still have a boot partition marked on the blank drive. Clear all partitions on the blank drive, setup a new one and reformat the blank drive. Also move the boot functional drive above the blank one in the bios boot order and you should be good to go assuming that the drive is good.

 

[Aeacus]

there is nothing on the drive

Sure there is. A boot loader. Without it, OS won't boot. And since it is important system files, it won't show up in normal explore nor in Disk Management.

There are ways to move/install the boot loader to current OS drive, e.g like described here,
link: https://www.sevenforums.com/install...moving-second-hard-drive-efi.html#post2026366

But far easier would be making clean Win install on your PNY drive.

 

[DivneBloodline]

Sure there is. A boot loader. Without it, OS won't boot. And since it is important system files, it won't show up in normal explore nor in Disk Management.

There are ways to move/install the boot loader to current OS drive, e.g like described here,
link: https://www.sevenforums.com/install...moving-second-hard-drive-efi.html#post2026366

But far easier would be making clean Win install on your PNY drive.

Yes, I just restarted my PC with Crucial plugged in and forced BIOS, and I saw that windows boot manager was there. I would have assumed windows would move that to my boot drive when I switched that years ago, but I guess not.

 

[DSzymborski]

Yes, I just restarted my PC with Crucial plugged in and forced BIOS, and I saw that windows boot manager was there. I would have assumed windows would move that to my boot drive when I switched that years ago, but I guess not.

Windows does not automatically move these things because it can create even more problems to move system files from drive to drive without someone's request to do so.

Because of this, and other reasons, it's best practice to only have the OS drive installed when installing Windows, which ensures that system files all remain only on the OS drive.

 

[DivneBloodline]

Windows does not automatically move these things because it can create even more problems to move system files from drive to drive without someone's request to do so.

Because of this, and other reasons, it's best practice to only have the OS drive installed when installing Windows, which ensures that system files all remain only on the OS drive.

Makes sense, I'll keep this in mind in the future thanks.

 

[ImpalerPLM]

I have racked my brains for two days and found an incredibly simple solution.

A little background first. I had a SSD with Windows 10 installed. Then I bought a NVMe disk, I installed Windows 10 on it while SSD remained and after I removed the SSD. The Windows 10 on NVMe sure enough did not boot. There was no EFI partition or System Recovery. Just one healthy partition.

I fixed it you know how? I hooked back up the SSD. I booted Windows from it. I installed some partition cloning program. Cloned SSD's EFI partition to my other HDD and gave it a letter. Then I was able to access EFI partitions files via Explorer. Then I simply copied the EFI folder from that partition to the NVMe drive.

I removed SSD drive, I removed HDD drive and the NVMe just fn booted. With EFI boot files simply sitting on the drive as a regular folder. No partition recreation no nothing. I'm a genius. I'm still sitting on the chair amazed that such a trick have worked. This happened 15 mins ago after 2 days and ~50 reboots.

 

[USAFRet]

I have racked my brains for two days and found an incredibly simple solution.

A little background first. I had a SSD with Windows 10 installed. Then I bought a NVMe disk, I installed Windows 10 on it while SSD remained and after I removed the SSD. The Windows 10 on NVMe sure enough did not boot. There was no EFI partition or System Recovery. Just one healthy partition.

I fixed it you know how? I hooked back up the SSD. I booted Windows from it. I installed some partition cloning program. Cloned SSD's EFI partition to my other HDD and gave it a letter. Then I was able to access EFI partitions files via Explorer. Then I simply copied the EFI folder from that partition to the NVMe drive.

I removed SSD drive, I removed HDD drive and the NVMe just fn booted. With EFI boot files simply sitting on the drive as a regular folder. No partition recreation no nothing. I'm a genius. I'm still sitting on the chair amazed that such a trick have worked. This happened 15 mins ago after 2 days and ~50 reboots.

The easier solution would have been to do it correctly to start.
Have only the one desired drive connected when you install a Windows OS.