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7 Posts
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6156
November 13th, 2017 04:00
Replacing HDD with SSD in Vostro 3650 Desktop PC
I'm in the process of replacing the main drive (HDD) in my Vostro 3650 with an SSD and I've run into a slight problem which hopefully someone can help with.
I bought a Samsung 850 SSD and have used the Samsung software to clone the main drive but I'm experiencing problems when booting. If the HDD is in place the system boots OK (albeit somewhat slowly). If I replace the HDD with the cloned SSD the system doesn't boot and I get the following displayed.
It looks like it's not seeing the drive and falling back on booting via PXE on the NIC. The thing is if I press F12 when booting I get the following.
I can scroll down through the UEFI options and select the HDD1 - Windows Boot Manager(Samsung SSD 850 Evo 250GB) option and it then boots of the SSD no problem and the system runs vey nicely after that but that's not really a useful solution.
What I want to know is why has the replacement SSD been added at the end as an additional boot option instead of just being treated as a bootable drive and being handled by the first WIndow Boot Manager option?
I don't see any way to change the order of these boot options either - the first three seem to be set in stone and can only be Enabled/Disabled not re-ordered and when on the page that lets you do this, the new fourth option isn't present. Disabling the first three options doesn't help either - the system only seems to try the first three option and then gives up.
Any assistance with this issue would be most grateful.
ejn63
9 Legend
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87.5K Posts
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November 13th, 2017 05:00
Re-do the cloning process, making absolutely sure the first boot after cloning has ONLY the new SSD in the system - DISCONNECT the original hard drive. Once that's done the first time, you can reconnect the existing hard drive to the system.
PortableNuke
7 Posts
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November 13th, 2017 05:00
I'll give it a go, but I only have a single SATA cable in the system so I cannot connect both at the same time anyway. I'm not sure if it's relevant, but when I first tried to boot up after installing the cloned drive instead of just simply booting it brought up some sort of Dell diagnostics checking screen.
ejn63
9 Legend
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87.5K Posts
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November 13th, 2017 11:00
You must have connected both devices to clone them -- even if one is connected by USB, be sure you DO NOT boot the system with the original drive attached the first time you do so after cloning.
PortableNuke
7 Posts
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November 13th, 2017 16:00
Ok, so I booted the system off the HDD and then connected the SSD via USB and ran the Samsung Data Migration software to clone the HDD.
When the clone was complete, I closed the Samsung App, ejected the USB drive and disconnected it. I then shut the system down, disconnected the SATA leads from the HDD and plugged them into the SSD, so the HDD was NOT connected. I then booted the system and got exactly the same result - the system tries to boot from the NIC because the first option (Windows Boot Manager) obviously doesn;t find anything to boot from.
If I then do CTRL-ALT-DEL and hit F12 I have the same 4 UEFI options as mentioned previously. I can scroll down through the options to reach the Windows Boot Manager on the Samsung SSD and boot from there, but that's no use whatsoever.
If I go into the BIOS Setup (version 3.3.10) the Samsung SSD does show up as the Fixed HDD, but the system point blank refuses to recognize the SSD as the main bootable media despite the fact that it is bootable.
Ivy li
15 Posts
0
November 15th, 2017 19:00
If your problem is still not solved, you can try another software to clone HDD to SSD . For disk cloning software, I recommend you AOMEI Backupper. here are some things you need to know:
1. before you clone hard drive, take out all media which can be used to boot your computer and only have your HDD and SSD
2. after you clone, plug HDD out of your computer and install your SSD in the original location of your HDD.
2dez4six
2 Posts
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November 20th, 2017 09:00
I have the exact same problem with the same Dell 3650 computer and same Samsung 850 EVO SSD. I thought it was maybe a bad SSD but you confirm the problem. I cloned it twice with the Samsung program just in case and both time have been successful. Any suggestions would be appreciated.
2dez4six
2 Posts
0
November 21st, 2017 07:00
I tried the backup software AOMEI as suggested by Ivy Li. The free version didn't work - appears you have to buy the Pro version to clone to an SSD. The problem is that the Dell doesn't recognize the cloned SSD as the boot drive.
PortableNuke
7 Posts
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November 21st, 2017 16:00
It turns out that the Samsung cloning utility made some very subtle changes to the layout of the disk when it was cloned. I did a little reading up on the UEFI spec and discovered a utility called EasyUEFI. I booted the system of the SSD (see my previous post) and downloaded the utility and installed it. This allowed me to review the Boot Manager Entry.
It seems that it was expecting to find the boot manager on partition 1 but on the cloned drive the boot manager was on partition 2. I then used the utility to edit the Windows Boot Manager entry and select the correct partition on disk 0 and then save the change and quit the app.
Now when I boot the system only has the original three boot options and the system boots successfuly (and very quickly) of the SSD.