Windows 10: 2.5" SATA III SSD not seen in BIOS as a boot disk

The machine is MSI Titan GT80 SLI and it has 4 SSDs: 3x2280 PCIe and 1x2.5" SATA III SSD.

I have no issues with making images of the primary boot SSD, from one 2280 to another 2280 using Macrium Reflect. Then I use the bcdboot command to make the drive bootable.

however, I recently cloned the 2280 SSD from the primary boot drive to the 2.5" SATA III SSD. The cloning process went as usual (I used Macrium Reflect for years). then I did the usual bcdboot stuff. Once I rebooted, the 2.5" SATA III is not visible in BIOS under "boot" where the boot disks are visible. All the 2280s are visible, the PCIe ones.
the 2.5" is not visible and thus not selectable. However, it is visible under hardware section and it's certainly visible once the machine is up off the primary boot SSD. You can format it, clone to it, write data, etc. So the system sees it but it's just not recognized as a boot disk at all.

:)

 

Disk 1 and Disk 2 Switch When Disk 2 Installed

I have a dual-boot system and just replaced my primary HDD with a SSD. Because my computer insisted on installing the System Reserved partition on the alternate boot HDD, I removed the other 5 HDDs while I clean installed Windows 10 on the new primary SSD.
That worked. System Reserved is in Partition 1 and Windows 10 is in Partition 2 of Disk 0 (the new SSD).

I then shutdown, reconnected Disk 1, and completed a clean install of Windows 10. That worked out fine. Windows added a selector to choose between the two Windows systems. All seemed well.

I shutdown again, reconnected Disk 2-5 and restarted. As I recall everything looked fine until I restarted again. When I shutdown Windows displayed an update dialog "Don't shut down your PC" that lasted for a few minutes after which time the PC restarted.
When I checked Disk Management Disks 1 & 2 had switched and the Alternate Boot Disk is now Disk 2.

I have checked and rechecked the cabling for the 6 SATA cables and they are correct. Also, any time I choose the Alternate Boot Disk in the Windows boot selector, the PC restarts and then boots the Alternate Boot Disk which significantly delays the boot
process.

I built this computer in 2009. It has BIOS and a dated i7 920 processor. The BIOS can boot from a USB connected HDD but not a USB flash drive. So, I've been using ISO DVDs for installing Windows 10.

Since this post, I have gone through all of the BIOS setup screens and found that Disk 0 is SATA CH0 Master, Disk 1 is SATA CH0 Slave and Disk 2 is SATA 1 Master. The first two disk in the boot order were SATA CH0 Master and SA2A CH1 Master. I thought that
might be what caused the Disk 1/2 switch so I promoted SATA CH0 Slave to number two. However, I've rebooted several times looking for Disk 2 (CH0 Slave) to switch back to Disk 1 but it hasn't happened.

What's causing this and is there anything I can do about it?

Would reverting the HDD boot order to CH0 Master and CH1 Master, and also moving the Alternate Boot Disk to the CH1 Master work? Does BIOS/Windows number the disk in the following order: (#0) CH0 Master, (#1) CH1 Master, (#2) CH0 Slave, (#3) CH1 Slave, (#4)
CH2 Master, (#5) CH3 Master? That would match what I'm seeing.

Thanks.

Bill

***Post moved by the moderator to the appropriate forum category.***

 

Win10 clean install on Samsung SSD 850 EVO

BLUF: SSD is not listed ubder "Where do you want to install Windows?"

Steps Complete:

1. I've create a Win10 bootable install usb.

2. I connect the new Samsung SSD 850 EVO via SATA.

3. I reboot PC and verify SSD is seen by the motherboard/BIOS

4. Begin Win10 install via usb.

5. Get to "Where do you want to install Windows?" and the SSD is not listed

Problems:

1. Samsung does not offer a driver for the 850 on their website

2. Cannot locate driver elsewhere

Unsuccessful Mitigations Steps Attempt:

A. Format & partition SSD via Windows Disk Management, then retried steps 1-5 above....same result

B. Clone existing HHD onto SSD via "Image for Windows" by TeraByte, then verified SSD contents via Windows Explorer....similar result

Can you please offer some advice on locating a driver for a Samsung SSD 850 EVO 1TB drive? Or an alternative method?

Thank you

 

Windows 10 Creators Update crashes SSD boot disk

Hi,

I have Win10 installed on an UEFI boot
Samsung EVO 840 SSD and installed the Win10 Creators Update and when I returned to the PC after leaving it to complete the update it was at the logon screen and unresponsive. I reset the PC after making sure there appeared to be no activity
(HDD light, etc.) and it came up with a "please insert boot disk" error. I then went into BIOS and the SSD was not in the detected drive list. So I opened the PC and disconnected/reconnected the SSD and rebooted successfully. After logging into windows the
system froze after about 5-10 minutes. So again I rebooted and got the "insert boot disk error". I repeated this a few times after swapping SATA & power cables and motherboard ports for the connected drives and still got the freezing issues after 5-10 minutes
followed by the SSD disappearing in the BIOS.

I was quite confused and annoyed that somehow just after the update my SSD had crashed (as this was the only thing that had changed). I have now uninstalled the creators update and the PC has now been running for several hours with no issues. Has anyone
else experienced this problem with an SSD boot drive setup and is there another solution to the problem so that I can continue to receive updates? I would also be interested to learn how an OS update can cause the BIOS to fail to detect the drive until I open
the PC case and fiddle with the SATA cables?

Cheers.