Issues with installation of new MSATA SSD

Hello all,

I recently received a new Kingston 240gb MSATA SSD (RMA replacement) for my Alienware 14 laptop. It's an SUV500MS/240G.

I seem to be having a bit of a nightmare with getting it set up properly. So my intention was to set it up as the new boot drive and then have the 750GB SATA HDD that's already installed run as the secondary. After installing Windows 10 home edition via a USB drive, when entering the bios I noticed that the new SSD is listed under legacy drive in the boot options and not UEFI. In an attempt to correct this set the BIOS to only boot with UEFI and then rebooted with the installation USB drive and used disk part to clean the SSD and convert it from MBR to GPT and then reinstalled windows 10. The first attempt to reinstall seemed to get hung up and I had to repeat the process, the second attempt successfully installed and was able to boot into windows.

If I go into system information, the BIOS mode is now listed as UEFI and not legacy, however the SSD still isn't listed in the BIOS as an option under UEFI boot devices. To make things even more annoying when I boot the laptop it now lists 3 different operating systems - I assume these are the one I installed in legacy, the failed one and the successful UEFI one.

I read online that simply changing an SSD from MBR to GPT will not in fact dictate if the drive is seen as UEFI or legacy but instead it is based off of the type of bootloader it has installed. It goes on to say that to be UEFI it needs an EFI system partition and then lists steps to delete and replace the system partition. You may say well there is your answer but that leads me to the next step of the problem. When loading up disk management, what's listed as disk 1 is the new SSD and disk 0 is the old 750GB HDD. The 750GB drive has an associated system partition but the SSD does not even though it is the primary boot drive (C:) I attempted to use disk part again as the online post had suggested to create an efi partition on the SSD however disk part simply tells me that there is not enough usable space for this operation.

Now that I have attempted to explain my problem I was wondering if anyone could offer up any sort of solution, my aims are to A) Add an efi partition to the SSD in the hope it will make the BIOS see it as a UEFI boot drive or if anyone simply has an alternate method to achieve this same goal that would also be appreciated.
B) Remove the excess operating systems that are now listed on the laptop when booting

If any additional information is required or further explanation is needed please don't hesitate to ask and I shall get back to you ASAP.

Thanks
Daniel

Edit 1: It seems as if I have managed to remove the operating systems that were listing when starting the laptop. I used msconfig to do this, I am hoping this has actually removed it and not just hidden it, if anyone could let me know if this was the correct route to solve this issue that would be great.

dalchina said:

Forgive an elementary question or two:

It sounds as if you're happy to clean install Win 10 on your new SSD and use that as your O/S rather than transferring your O/S from the old HDD.

So to answer your question I am looking to clean install on the new SSD the main reason for this is as it was an RMA replacement the old SSD was actually my old boot drive and considering it died I kind of accepted simply starting with a fresh SSD and clean install and to be honest I didn't really have much on there anyway as my PC is used as my main device.

When you did the clean install, did you still have the old HDD in the PC?
(I assume your laptop can accommodate at least 2 drives).

The HDD has remained in the laptop while I installed the SSD and also installed windows.

That is the safe and recommended way to do a clean install.
Naturally if you wanted a UEFI installation, your BIOS/UEFI would have to be configured as such before you began.

When I did the first installation I believe the BIOS was configured as UEFI with legacy and it installed as legacy rather than UEFI.

Is there any reason why you don't wish to clone your old O/S onto the SSD?

As mentioned above the old SSD with the O/S on died so I'm not looking to clone.


Note: when you do have a functional O/S on your SSD you do not want to place the HDD into the same PC with an O/S on it.



No, that does not remove it.

To remove the O/S you would delete all the partitions making up the O/S (4 for UEFI, fewer for legacy BIOS).
I've looked in disk management and from what I can tell there aren't partitions in there on the old HDD for an O/S. the drive itself has 595GB out of 696GB of remaining space and that 101GB is accounted for on the drive itself. I think the other listed O/S's on boot were all linked to the new SSD.

Hopefully that clears it up a bit.

My biggest issue at the moment is trying to get the computer itself to recognise the SSD as a UEFI boot device in the BIOS. I don't think any of the steps listed are going to help with that as I had to essentially reformat when doing the 2nd/3rd installation earlier after I had set the BIOS to UEFI only and had changed the SSD from MBR to GPT. I guess I am after some directional information on how to create an EFI partition on the SSD, I don't seem to be able to do this using disk part as it says the drive doesn't have space to do so.

Hello Navy,

Thank you for your response. I have attempted to follow your steps and have successfully created an efi partition on the C: drive. When I attempt to use the format line in disk part it states the following "The arguments specified for this command are not valid" Just to confirm it was typed exactly as followed "format fs=fat 32 quick" if you could offer any advice on how you think I could correct this problem that would be great.

Thanks
Daniel

It should be "FAT32" without a space.

Thank you for the reply.

I now get the following message:

Virtual disk service error:
format is not allowed on the current boot, system, pagefile, crash dump or hibernation volume.

Daniel C said:

Thank you for the reply.

I now get the following message:

Virtual disk service error:
format is not allowed on the current boot, system, pagefile, crash dump or hibernation volume.

You need to select the newly created EFI system partition before formatting it. I accidently deleted my previous post. I will recreate it shortly.