How do I find the boot option menu for a new SSD cloned from HDD?

xlcgroup · 28 Mar 2018

I bought 3 SSD's to upgrade all my machines. I have formatted, made a clone of my C: to my SSD (D:) including all existing partitions which leaves me about 100 GB's of unallocated space. I can confirm that the SSD is displayed under My Computer, Intel SSD Toolbox, ePSA, Disk Management and Speccy.

When I go to BIOS (A20), I cannot see the list of boot options at all including Boot from USB, CD, HDD, etc.
I checked every menu and sub-menu. Nothing. Here is what I see. I just want to be able to run the OS from the SSD from now on and use the HDD just as a restore point in case things go south.

I will include 3 more pics after this post, max of 5. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

xlcgroup · 28 Mar 2018

It's a Dell Lattitude E6520 Laptop.

I have never seen a BIOS where I couldn't see any of the drives at all. I can move the order around but I can't get a list so I can't pick from HDD or SSD.

Here are the BIOS pics, please let me know if I am leaving anything out and thank you in advance!

Megahertz07 · 29 Mar 2018

How did you clone the HDD to the SSD? What program did you use?
Some programs need to shutdown after cloning to transfer some boot files that are in use.

Does the laptop has two HDD bays? Did you replace the original HDD by the SSD?

xlcgroup · 29 Mar 2018

I used macrium reflect to clone drive from hdd to ssd.

I will try your advice tonight at home. Hope this is all it takes to experience ssd power for the first time!

Thank you for your help!

Btw, I did try restarting to no avail. I never got around the BIOS change but seems like I did everything else.

The laptop has one hdd bay and I used a drive caddy to be able to swap out my dvd rom. So i was planning on using the caddy as my primary and when i need to use the CD, I can run the OS from hdd. Seems like that would be easier than swapping out the hdd for the sdd considering I want to keep the hdd as a reserve drive in case something happens to the ssd.

Megahertz07 · 29 Mar 2018

Windows won't boot from a external device.
You must replace the HDD with the SSD.
Unplug the charger from the laptop, take the battery off, open the HDD door, take the screws out and change the HDD by the SSD.
On most laptops, the HDD isn't attached directly to the laptop case. It is inside a metallic frame. In this case you will need to take the frame out the laptop, take out the HDD from the frame, insert the SSD into the frame and then the frame back to the laptop.
Be careful not to change screws as the might be different sizes. Line them up when disassembling and put them back on the reverse order.
Also, there probably be no separate power and SATA cables but only one connector. Be gently as it's fragile.

Be free to ask. You're welcome.

After you able to boot from the SSD, replace the ODD by the original HDD.

Remember: It is never a good idea to have a Backup on the same laptop. If you loose it, you loose everything.

xlcgroup · 29 Mar 2018

Megahertz07 said:

Windows won't boot from a external device.
You must replace the HDD with the SSD.
Unplug the charger from the laptop, take the battery off, open the HDD door, take the screws out and change the HDD by the SSD.
On most laptops, the HDD isn't attached directly to the laptop case. It is inside a metallic frame. In this case you will need to take the frame out the laptop, take out the HDD from the frame, insert the SSD into the frame and then the frame back to the laptop.
Be careful not to change screws as the might be different sizes. Line them up when disassembling and put them back on the reverse order.
Also, there probably be no separate power and SATA cables but only one connector. Be gently as it's fragile.

Be free to ask. You're welcome.

After you able to boot from the SSD, replace the ODD by the original SSD.

Remember: It is never a good idea to have a Backup on the same laptop. If you loose it, you loose everything.

I don't think we're on the same page.
I have a drive caddy which allows me to swap out my CD drive for a 2.5" SSD drive enclosure. I swapped it out and it is recognized by the OS, I just couldn't get it to boot from there... until today.

In pic 1, you see my options for the boot menu. "System device bay", the last option on the list is where I found my SSD just now!!! The model number is right and everything.

Pic 2 is what device is listed for internal HDD. I didn't know where to find SSD yesterday so I called it a day after hours of research.

Pic 3 is the BIOS menu. When I hit system device bay, the SSD is used to boot from... and man, what a thing of beauty. From that point to fully loading W7 + 6-7 programs that auto-load on startup takes about 35 seconds.

Pic 4 is how I saved my new boot order but left like this, it is still booting from the HDD, I know because it takes 1:47 to fully load when I don't use system device bay to load W7.

I am missing something here but at least I know I can boot from the SSD now, just need to figure out how to do it w/o the use of system device bay.

xlcgroup · 30 Mar 2018

Well, that was short lived. I woke up this morning to try to boot manually from the SSD (System Device Bay, as posted yesterday)... now that System Device Bay is missing and replaced with this. How does that happen? I now have 2 HDD's (same model, WD 500GB) listed under 2 options... Internal HDD (same as yesterday) and now "PO" which is listed as the last option in the pic.

Can someone please help me?

xlcgroup · 30 Mar 2018

So I just restarted the laptop and now there is A21 update available.
https://imgur.com/a/hyRNd
https://imgur.com/a/E8uug
https://imgur.com/a/dJzmG

Failed the battery test and some sound card issue but as far as the drives, no issues.
https://imgur.com/a/YZ8DP
https://imgur.com/a/BUVpT

So here goes the actual swap.

xlcgroup · 31 Mar 2018

I got it!!! I physically swapped out the HDD for the SSD and it's booting from it!

Only problem, it takes 30 seconds to actually start loading W7, then another 25 for W7 to fully load with all startup programs. It was faster loading to get to the W7 logo on the HDD, it took half as long. Now from that point to getting to the desktop after all strartup programs loading, different story but there shouldn't be any way an HDD should be outperforming an SSD on any level, I would think.

Initially, it wasn't like this with the SSD, everything was lighnting fast from power up to loaded W7 would take 45 seconds or less. I know I should be happy but this is really bugging me.

As soon as I boot up, it'll take me 30 seconds just to see the W7 logo spinning before W7 actually starts loading. Spent last night trying to figure out why while I formatted the 500GB HHD and went to bed frustrated again.

Megahertz07 · 02 Apr 2018

Glad you have it working. I told you to physically swap out the HDD for the SSD on post #5.

I can see that the SSD has been on for 975 days. Did you buy them as used?
I can also see that your SSD is SATA II (3Gb/s) and is compatible with the laptop SATA II interface.

Make sure trim is enabled.
Type this cmd
fsutil behavior query DisableDeleteNotify

It will give you one of two results, either a 0 or a 1. A zero indicates that TRIM is enabled correctly, a one means that it is not. If you have a TRIM-compatible SSD, but find that Windows 7 hasn't enabled the command, you can easily do so by running this command:

fsutil behavior set DisableDeleteNotify 0

As you're going to use the HDD on the drive caddy, I would have bought a small SSD (128G) for windows and programs and use the HDD for data.

As your laptop is quite old, if you want to have a good performance my suggestion is to do a Win 7 clean install. You have no idea what a clean install can do on an old computer.