Adding a SSD Drive HP ENVY 17-3090nr 3D

I bought this laptop at the beginning of 2012. This was purchased from Amazon and came pre-configured with a Intel 80GB mSATA drive and a Hitachi GST Travelstar 750GB in Bay 1. I had run out of room on my mSATA drive, so...



I recently purchased a Intel 520 Series 240GB SSD drive and cloned my mSATA to the new SSD, which I originally installed in Bay 2. I could go into the BIOS and had 2 options for booting. The mSATA Hard Drive or Notebook Hard Drive. The 3rd. hard drive didn't show up, because I figured there was no OS on it. Booting to the notebook hard drive brought up the new SSD drive.


After some testing I found that mSATA and Bay 2 were SATA II and Bay 1 was the only SATA III. So I swapped the Hitachi and the Intel and have my Intel in Bay 1. Now onto where I've run into a problem...BIOS, Version F.06



In the BIOS on this laptop there are very few changes that can be made. When I put the Intel SSD in Bay 1 and tried to boot off this drive it reverted to the mSATA drive. Evidently, HP only allows you to boot from mSATA drive , or bay 2, if you have a mSATA drive installed. Both of these are SATA II, which kind of defeats the purpose of having SATA III. The only way I could get this to boot off the new SSD drive was to remove the mSATA hard drive. Stupid.



Thoughts?



A couple of my thoughts...



Hard Drive Hardware Kit, 665909-001 was ordered through HP. It would have been thoughtful to include the mounting screws for the enclosure to the computer, not just the mounting screws for hard drive to enclosure. I ended up ‘borrowing’ 2 screws from the other hard drive.



BIOS settings really could use some improvement. How about uEFI as well? What’s the point of having access to 3 hard drives if you can’t boot from all 3? “Boot from…” should be a permanent change until I get back into the BIOS and change again.



Why is the mSATA SATA II instead of SATA III?



Why have a SSD mSATA and 750GB hard drive that is not optimized or set up properly for Windows 7. The mSATA should have been set up for the OS, and the user accounts and programs stored on the 750HD, would have been the way I would have shipped this from the factory.

I realize my thoughts are rhetorical.

Thanks.

 

What options are there in the BIOS? Is there any boot order or boot devices list?

 

Sorry it took so long to get back to you. That's the problem. HP has very few choices in the BIOS settings and it doesn't work the way it is supposed to. With the mSATA and the other hard drive with an OS installed on it in Bay 1(which happens to be the SATA III connection) I get to BIOS and the 'Boot Selection' is- mSATA and Laptop Hard Drive. If I select the Laptop Hard Drive it will not boot from that device and will only boot from the mSATA drive. Removing the mSATA drive allows the laptop to boot to the Bay 1 drive. If the drive is in Bay 2(SATA II) I can get into the BIOS I can select the 'Laptop Hard Drive' and it boots from that, or if I just start normally the default drive is the mSATA drive. This seems to be a limitation built in by HP. Thoughts?

 

I noticed I didn't really answer your questions.

Is there any boot order?

Yes, but it's limited to what bay the other hard drive is in.


Is there any boot devices list?

Yes, but the options are

Hard Drive
CD/DVD Drive
USB