New Drive - no boot

[OneWorld]

A friend of mine has fitted a new PCIe SSD

He had the drive as drive D: booted the PC, made a copy of Drive C:(old HDD Win10 boot drive) using Macrium Reflect, so a copy of...

Drive C:old HDD Win10 => D: new PCIe SSD

After making the copy, he checked the files and sure enough there they were on his new PCIe SSD. So far so good

Here's where it gets a bit flakey, as he was explaining all this over the phone whilst his dog was as per usual barking it ba*ls of and it is sometimes difficuilt to hear what's being said.

But from what I understand, he left both drives in situ, switched the PC on, went into the BIOS to re-assign the boot drives (ie make the new PCIe SSD be the boot drive)

However, the BIOS listed both derives as being found, but did not show either of the drives as booters. ON first boot I would have disconnected the old HDD so as to make things as simple as possible for the BIOS, anyway, he didn't

So, no booting took place.

He removed the old HDD, same thing, the BIOS did not see any boot device.

He removed the PCIe SSD and put the old HDD back - still, no boot device showing, as such he cannot set the BIOS boot order.

His BIOS seems a little strange in so much that on the BIOS screen showing drives, there is a left and right column. On the left all devices, on the right all the devices that can boot. In either case, neither of the 2 drives appears in the right hand column.

I am going to have a look tomorrow, but not sure I can be of much use to him as I have never had such a problem where the BIOS doesn't 'see' a boot device.

Maybe he has set the BIOS incorrectly? AFAIK the BIOS doesn't detect a boot device but just displays the devices available and the user assigns the BOOT device, in whatever order he/she chooses. That said his BIOS is different than mine.

Any ideas anyone? All I can suggest is boot from Macrium CD, or an old HDD I have win a spare copy of Win10, and then try a FIX MBR ?

[Nazard]

He had the drive as drive D: booted the PC, made a copy of Drive C:(old HDD Win10 boot drive) using Macrium Reflect, so a copy of...

He may have already done this, but it needs to be a clone of the existing boot drive, not a copy or image. Otherwise it won't have the MBR, etc., in place, so won't boot.

If he hasn't got any further, I would remove the SSD. Reboot and using the Win 10 installation disc, or USB stick, 'repair' the non-bootable HDD and restore the MBR. If it now boots OK, reinstall the SSD, format it and clone it. The SDD may have come with its own cloning software, e.g. Samsung Magician which is usually easy to use, otherwise use Macrium to clone it.

Ideally all data will have been backed up up prior to doing any of this. If this fails, you may have to visit him to sort it out, whilst he feeds the dog........

[merlyn]

The new PCIe SSD may use GPT, not MBR. The BIOS could also be UEFI if the motherboard is recent.

The UEFI boot process requires a UEFI partition, and the location of that is written into the BIOS (UEFI) by the Windows installer.

I would think it's easily fixable, but be prepared for some new acronyms.

[OneWorld]

The new PCIe SSD may use GPT, not MBR. The BIOS could also be UEFI if the motherboard is recent.

The UEFI boot process requires a UEFI partition, and the location of that is written into the BIOS (UEFI) by the Windows installer.

I would think it's easily fixable, but be prepared for some new acronyms.

We fixed it in the end but not quite sure how, but I think it did centre on the points you make here. Also when he cloned the disk, and I don't know how he managed it, but the old HDD had 4 partitions, with a partition called X: as the last partition. However the way he cloned the new drive, that partition X: showed as the first partition, but it wasn't activated.

So when booting, the first partition (well in fact not a partition I guess not having been activated) was seen by the bios, had no boot sector, the bios found the physical disk, but not an active partition and so didn't go any further.

I managed to get the machine booting from a bootable USB with partition management software on it.

But, also one of the leads obvious things was on closer inspection, the sata data cable had a 'fat' connector. By that I mean, when the power connector was plugged into the drive and then the data connector, the data connector went in ever so slightly skew wiff. Thing is, I reckoned sometimes it connected, other times it didn't, my friend had figured it was a faulty bios, but I thought no, if it was a faulty bios, then it would either see the disk or not, no in between

So we changed the sata data cable, which sat snug in-situ and holy kamole, drive seen, pc booted, and I reckon that was the fault all the time.

My friend has all is work stored on c: which is partitioned into 3 logical drives. He does graphics in the games industry and literally has 1000's of files where a Photoshop project might have lots of layers, masks etc Does he have a reliable back-up? Nah, well he does now, or at least acknowledges why reliable and easy to access back-up is crucial. And then we had a cuppa

[merlyn]

So when booting, the first partition (well in fact not a partition I guess not having been activated) was seen by the bios, had no boot sector, the bios found the physical disk, but not an active partition and so didn't go any further.

If you got it working the details aren't too important but UEFI boot doesn't use a boot sector. This partition X: may have been the EFI partition. On my Linux machine it's easy to tell the EFI partition because it's FAT32 and I think that's standard.

My boot disk uses GPT which doesn't need an MBR, but there's one there anyway. It's called the 'protective MBR' and it's there in case anything tries to alter the MBR and catastrophically wreck the start of the disk, which is what would happen without the protective MBR.

[Mike Stranks]

Good work!

Your post reminds me why I don't go poking about in PCs (literally and metaphorically) with things of which I have miniscule understanding.

With my background in IT from the olden-times, I know enough about the complexities to know that best-guesses are a road to potential disaster! About 20 years ago I did try a 'best-guess' and had to have the PC completely rebuilt from a software perspective... lesson learnt.

But many high-fives to those of you who do know what you're doing...

[OneWorld]

Good work!

Your post reminds me why I don't go poking about in PCs (literally and metaphorically) with things of which I have miniscule understanding.

With my background in IT from the olden-times, I know enough about the complexities to know that best-guesses are a road to potential disaster! About 20 years ago I did try a 'best-guess' and had to have the PC completely rebuilt from a software perspective... lesson learnt.

But many high-fives to those of you who do know what you're doing...

You can imagine how elated my pal feels now he does have it working. Goofle proved to be useless, when he searched for a solution to the issue, most of the replies were adverts for 'freeware' that was in fact free to download but you had to pay to use, or rambling waffle that was a million miles away from the original question, so in the end he worked it out for himself

He was quite anxious about the whole thing, almost at the stage o lug and saying "I won't my mummy" and me offered my usual words of wisdom - "Oh dear what a shame never mind, in the end it'll either be fixed or f*cked"

His job is doing artwork for computer games which includes many years worth of complex artwork all stored on the C:Drive, no matter how many times I told "Back Up, Back Up and Back Up" he certainly learned the importance of a backup regime now, after facing the prospect of losing access to the disk where the data was stored.

Of course, even when a disk won't boot, you can still get access to the data, but that isn't always the case. I recently had an SSD go belly up and no matter what I tried, even the BIOS wouldn't see it. But in my case, it didn't matter, I had backup. Anyway, all is well and he's happy as Larry now he has his brand new PC all up and running

And for those who might experience the same issue, here's what to fixed it.

1. Make regular images and do data backup, or better still have a separate data drive

2. When buying kit - read the instructions (Well yes we all know RTFM)

3. Ensure you are familiar with issues regarding MBR/GPT and BIOS/EUFI

4. Don't have 2 drives connected both called C: - ok you can define the boot order options but I still feel calling both drives by the same name can lead to confusion and anyway, when restoring an image to a new drive, the new drive will be assigned a drive letter anyway

5. When applying changes made by the partitioning/disk management software, make sure you look at the options shown on the screen - especially 'transfer OS to SSD'

[Mike Stranks]

WRT backups I use Backblaze. Yes; it costs, but it just gets on with it year in and year out. Even gives me a firm nudge if I've inadvertently left one of my external drives offline for a while so that it can't check/backup.

I've never had a catastrophe, but I have had to request individual files on a few occasions.