Why wont these drives work together?

ovia · 26 Jan 2020 at 08:05

Hi all,

I have come across something that now has me thoroughly confused so seeking some advice from you lot, i'm sure you have a solution to this.

Having recently installed new hard drives I imaged my old SSD windows drive to a new 1TB SSD and all worked well, this was on Monday. However yesterday I found a cheap M.2 240GB so installed that and no problems. I then mirrored the 1TB SSD to the M.2 drive, tested this by removing the SSD and all worked well.

However this is things start to go wrong, reinstall the SSD and despite all my efforts it will only boot from the SSD, annoying but not a major issue. I connect the SSD to another PC and erase it (redo partition and formatted it) and reconnect to my PC only this time Windows wont load; all it comes up with is unable to locate boot drive and after forcing the M.2 through BIOS it still wont load coming up with a number of error messages.

So far I can confirm both drives work independently of each other and work in a different system, I have tried all other SATA ports, reset BIOS, and tried a number of other drives and the 1TB SSD just wont allow the PC to load up. I know its not the number of ports being used as its currently running with the M.2, the (to be replaced) SSD, a mechanical HDD and a DVD player and have no issues.

In short the 1TB SSD simply will not allow windows to boot while connected.

Any thoughts or suggestions on the cause and how to fix this?

Many thanks

tonys · 26 Jan 2020 at 09:08

Have you tried to repair the windows install? It sounds like it still has the boot info on the ssd. Have you tried to format the drive to a different file system?

ovia · 26 Jan 2020 at 10:34

I’m trying with the repair but need a USB the issue is I can’t run the repair with the SSD attached. Just annoying as it seems fine on the other system. There must be some sort of conflict going but can’t find it.

tonys · 26 Jan 2020 at 12:36

Have you tried to boot with the ssd removed and try repair, then connect it while in windows and then try to format the file system?

ovia · 26 Jan 2020 at 13:29

Just tried booting with the m.2 and reconnecting the SSD and windows couldn’t see the SSD at all.

will try connecting up to other PC and redo the partition and format to a different file system later (family around). Hopefully that will fix it, but it just doesn’t seem right.

ovia · 26 Jan 2020 at 15:18

I’ve also now tried to do the repair install, that failed. Just not making any sense.

tonys · 27 Jan 2020 at 00:09

Can you do a fresh install?

Phil2008 · 28 Jan 2020 at 14:00

Is the ssd set as AHCI in the bios?

seagate_surfer · 28 Jan 2020 at 15:44

Would it be possible for you to set up a fresh install with only the M.2 attached, then after, attach the larger drive and format within the OS?

ovia · 28 Jan 2020 at 19:11

The SSD is set to AHCI, all drives are.

I can do a fresh install but not until the weekend

pc-guy · 29 Jan 2020 at 03:17

I think you have messed up the boot partition of the M.2 by having the previous SSD install out in at the same time as the M.2.

obtain a copy of Windows on USB by downloading one from MS and put it in a USB drive and repair windows through the installation patch from USB. That should restore the boot partition.