How do I boot from M.2 SSD!?

I have been able to clone my original 1TB hard drive I got with my alienware to my new Samsung 950 NVMe M.2 .

However I am unable to get the damn computer to boot from the new SSD, I dont see anywhere in the BIOS to get it too boot from the M.2 SSD.

Can anyone please explain how to get my computer to boot from the M.2 SSD?

Thanks in advance.

 

What version of Windows are you talking about? You may need to do an OS reinstallation. If the Windows you cloned came from a machine with no NVMe drivers, that may have something to do with it. In most cases you need to install the NVMe drivers during Windows setup.

 

The original drive had windows 10 on it, that is the drive that i cloned onto the samsung 950.

I thought windows 10 comes with the NVMe drivers?

 

Maybe @Phoenix can comment on that, but I think you still have to install NVMe drivers during Windows setup. Are all of the partitions in place? Was the original booting in UEFI mode with GPT or Legacy with MBR?

 

This works for me :
1. Clone OS to SSD
2. Remove HDD and boot only with SSD installed
3. After the initial boot, put back your HDD in
4. If it works correctly, the laptop will always boot from SSD by default
5. Make sure everything is ok before removing the OS from HDD

 

Honestly this look like a "hack". Isn't there a proper way to do that?

 

What I assume is the issue here......... Yes we know that Windows 10 has the NVMe Drivers built in but as Mr. Fox suggested, they may have not been incorporated into the boot loader, hence your problem

I suggest formatting your computer after backing up your stuff and ONLY have that one drive you are installing Windows on during the installation otherwise Windows will copy the bootloader to the second drive causing slow downs and more headaches when creating / restoring images since the boot files are on another drive.

 

Thank you all for your help and suggestions.

I hate to turn this into a how-to-thread as I followed iunlocks post but have been having major problems getting a fresh copy of windows to install.

I initially used Acronis True Image to clone my original hard drive to the samsung 950, and that did not work, it could not find the drive. Next I tried the samsung's data migration tool, and that seemed to copy all partitions and seemed to work properly. However I still wanted to do a clean install of the drive, so I used Jambu95's workaround to force it to boot from the SSD, thanks Jambu, and it worked. So I downloaded Dell's factory iso from the support page and burned it to a USB and tried doing a fresh install of windows 10, and this is where I have been stuck for the past few hours. Everytime I boot from the USB and choose the option to reset my PC I get an error saying "There was a problem resetting your PC." I can't get past this and it really frustrating.

This is where I am at now, any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

First tip, stop using Acronis True Image, it has failed me many times like you said where it would clone successfully but the volume would not be bootable.

Use Macrium Reflect which is free, then re-do the clone and let us know your results.

 

Yes, try this first. Acronis is trash. It has failed me multiple times as well. Macrium Reflect is your best chance of having this work... if it works.

Doing a reset is probably not going to work because the OS wasn't properly installed as a NVMe setup in the beginning. Plus, a reset is not really a clean install... would put it back the way it was on a non-NVMe installation, which isn't going to work well. If you have your product key, just download Windows 10 from Micro$loth and use the USB creation tool they provide and that might turn out better. No need to use the option provided by Dell.

 

I will try helping him using TeamViewer, sent him a PM. Free session sponsored by NBR forums

I need to check his boot, disk is MBR or GPT, and a lot of other things to see if he is in pupre UEFI mode or not

 

Thank you both for your help, Phoenix especially much appreciated brother.

 

@Mr. Fox

As I expected, using Macrium Reflect rather than Acronis True Image worked. I had to resize his C: Partition manually using MiniTool Partition Wizard as it was 960GB and his SSD is 256GB, so I resized it manually to 226GB so that the remaining partitions have place like the recovery partition.

Everything worked after formatting his HDD and he booted through the 950 PRO but the Windows built in restoration tool is not working even though we have the recovery partition so he is still gonna format and do a clean install.

 

Hey Phoenix,

Man this is getting crazy annoying. So I downloaded windows 10 from Microsoft and created a bootable USB media device using rufus to do a fresh install. I then pulled up your walk through guide and after completing the part of cleaning the disk in a command prompt, I select the drive and try to continue, however I get an error saying that "Windows can't be installed on drive 0 partition 1" when I click show details it states, "Windows cannot be installed to this disk. This computers hardware may not support booting to this disk. Ensure that the disk's controlled is enabled in the computers BIOS menu."

I have ensure that this is the only drive connected, that my SATA type is set to AHCI and not RAID, but I have not had any luck.

Any help on how to get this to fresh install to work?!

 

Where in my guide did you see "Use Rufus to create the bootable media?"???????????

the guide clearly states to use the Windows 10 Media Creation Tool, then when it asks you if you want to download it as an ISO or burn it to a USB Flash Disk, select USB Flash disk. It will then create the proper UEFI version of the flash disk.

Since you already ran the /clean command in DOS via Diskpart, the only reason you are not able to install it on the disk is because you have accidentally chosen the wrong settings in RUFUS

If you insist on using RUFUS, here are the correct settings:

 

Thanks for getting back to me so quickly Phoenix, much appreciated.

I tried both, windows media tool was the first one I used based off your walk through. I got the same error when using windows 10 media creation tool, which is why I tried Rufus afterwards.

I'll try again using your recommended settings for Rufus.