Hey guys,

So I put together a new computer this weekend to replace the (first) one I had built nine years ago. So I'm still a BIT if a novice in this department. In any case, the setup went fine until I decided to migrate over to my new Intel M_2 SSD. Unfortunately neither my motherboard nor my SSD came with adequate INSTRUCTIONS on how to install the M_2 beyond physical installation.

My previous PC's motherboard didn't have a slot for it, so I decided to make the migration over using my new PC. Once I had prepared the files on the HDD, I attempted to use Intel's own migration software but it failed to detect the drive. Now since the drive was detected in my device manager but not by FILE Explorer, I rectified this by PARTITIONING the drive so it would appear. I named this drive M (this will be significant later).

I tried Intel again and the software still wouldn't detect the M_2. So I used 3rd party software and used it to migrate Windows 10 to the M_2. When setting up the software for migration, the program informed me it needed to get rid of the partition to perform the migration. I accepted this and continued with the process. The migration happen overnight and I went to bed.

Upon booting up the system the next morning, I found that, although the migration appeared complete, the system was still booting from the original HDD. Cue an hour and a half of yackety sax music as I attempted to poke around BIOS to "enable" my M_2 as many online guides suggested. But recurringly many of the options available to the guides we're not available for me. And it's not like my BIOS (MSI Click BIOS 5) wasn't detecting it.. You could see it in the overview of the motherboard and among the storage drives. Just the options that people used to enable the M_2 weren't there.

So after a fuss I decided to try and force the PC to boot from the M_2 by disconnecting the HDD's SATA cable. This I did and low-and-behold it booted using the M_2 SSD. Now all I needed to do was reconnect the HDD to see if it would still boot from the SSD, so I could erase the old HDD and repurpose it as a backup/storage drive.

Upon opening the file explorer though, I saw TWO drives. They were two partitions of my M_2: one was a C drive which I had successfully migrated Windows 10 to, and the other was a little dinky 256 MB drive named M (my original drive partion shrunken vastly in size). It had 3 files on it that I didn't recognize. I thought this partition had been deleted in the migration, but it was back. So I thought, "this is messy I can do better." I deleted the partition using the same third party software and rebooted.

...Or attempted to. The system will no longer boot from the M_2 drive. At all. I basically have to plug in the HDD and it will boot from that. Windows 10 still sees the M_2 as does BIOS. But I can't boot from it.

Any help would be GREATLY appreciated. And mods if this belongs more in the Software forum please move it. I wasn't 100% sure if it belonged there or here.

As for my next step, I was thinking of wiping the M_2 and starting the migration from scratch. Thoughts?I'd install Windows clean to the M.2 SSD instead of the data migration method.

Reading what you wrote it looks like after the migration you may have accidentally blew away the SSD instead of the HDD install, and this is why your able to boot with the HDD to Windows 10 again.

Clean install of 10 will be less confusing and less likely to run into troubles with orphan data between builds and what to delete etc.Quote from: Fiore1300 on June 03, 2019, 10:01:24 AM

Upon opening the file explorer though, I saw TWO drives. They were two partitions of my M_2: one was a C drive which I had successfully migrated Windows 10 to, and the other was a little dinky 256 MB drive named M (my original drive partion shrunken vastly in size). It had 3 files on it that I didn't recognize. I thought this partition had been deleted in the migration, but it was back. So I thought, "this is messy I can do better." I deleted the partition using the same third party software and rebooted.

...Or attempted to. The system will no longer boot from the M_2 drive. At all. I basically have to plug in the HDD and it will boot from that. Windows 10 still sees the M_2 as does BIOS. But I can't boot from it.