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December 22nd, 2018 14:00
Dell XPS 18 (1810/1820): how to boot from SSD vs. HDD
Hi. I have a Dell XPS 18 Tablet (there is no tablet forum so I am posting this under Laptops). The autodetect shows it as an 1810 but I think it is an 1820 (but nothing turns on this). It has an HDD and SSD. I bought it used and when the seller did a clean install they installed on the OS on the HDD rather than the SSD.
I want to boot from the SSD. I cloned the C drive (the HDD) to the D drive (the SSD). After doing so I now have the C Drive (HDD), a D drive which just has a recovery folder on it (SSD) and an E drive that has all the cloned files (SSD). The tablet continues to boot to the HDD.
I went into the bios but it is profoundly unintuitive. There is a boot screen and it recognizes the HDD and SSD, but it doesn't have an option for setting the boot sequence. It currently has the windows boot manager as the priority 1 book sequence which can't be changed. There is an option to "add" a boot device but if I choose the SDD I have to pick 1 of 5 partitions and then it gives this list of terms to choose (one word is "boot"). I didn't add a second boot option since I couldn't figure out if I was choosing any of the right options. I did turn off the security function since I read online that this was necessary to change the boot sequence but that didn't do anything.
One option I've read about online is to use diskpart to reinitialize the HDD so it isn't a boot drive anymore which will result in the SSD being automatically selected. That seems like a dramatic step though so I'm checking here first for other solutions.
What I am hoping for are step by step instructions for how to make the SSD (now the E drive) the first / primary / main boot disk rather than the HDD (which is still the C drive) using the XPS 18's terrible bios menu.
Thanks,
Harristr
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December 22nd, 2018 22:00
Adding a bit more info. The bios is Aptio Setup Utility. The boot screen has the following options: Boot List Option [uefi]; File Browser Add Boot Option; File Browser Del Boot Option; Secure Boot [disabled]; Load Legacy Option Rom [disabled]; Boot Option Priorities: Boot Option 1 [SDD - see below]; Boot Option 2 [Windows Boot Manager]
I disabled the secure boot option since I read online that this was necessary to change to boot device. I used File Browser Add but have no idea what I'm doing. When I select it I get a "select media driver" screen which has the HDD with 2 partitions and the SDD with 4 (1, 3, 5, and 6). I have no idea why there are multiple partitions for each or what any of them mean.
Once I choose a partition (partition 1 from the SDD) I then get a second "select media file" screen with 13 options starting with <$Extend> and 12 other entries (first three start with a "<" and the rest start with a $". One of the 13 entries is $boot which is what I've chosen... since I want to "boot"???
When I boot I go to the Windows boot manager screen which gives me two Windows 10 options. Note that this screen has always given me two options so this is NOT a function of my setting up the SSD. The first Windows 10 option is on Volume 1 - this boots the original HDD; the second Windows 10 has no volume and won't boot - it gives me an error and options (to go bios, open recovery environment etc.).
If I go into the recovery environment and choose "use a device" it shows my SDD but if I select it I just end up back at the windows boot manager screen.
I am going to try the other 3 partitions on the SSD (3, 5 and 6) all using the "$boot" media option since I don't have time to try all 13 variations with all 4 partitions.
Still hoping someone has advice on this.
Thanks,
Harristr
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December 23rd, 2018 00:00
So... each of the 4 partitions on the SSD have different media options. Partition 3 had something called EFI which took me to a sub menu that had an EFI bootx64 option which seemed promising but again I defaulted back to the windows boot manager screen and volume 1 which takes me back to the HDD as a boot device.
I've made a recover usb drive and have the original usb windows installer so I'm going to give it a few days to see if anyone here can explain what to do and then I'll try using diskpart to reinitialize the HDD to see if that makes the SDD the default and if worse comes to worse I'll do a full re-install although that is a pathetic option.
Thanks,
Harristr
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December 26th, 2018 20:00
bump
Harristr
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January 5th, 2019 14:00
another bump...
Harristr
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January 11th, 2019 11:00
So no one has used this terrible bios to set an SDD drive as primary?
Emailed Dell and apparently they don't support their tablets just laptops...
smash591
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April 22nd, 2020 15:00
Hi,
I, too, am trying to figure out this crazy bios. I just installed a 128Gb SSD in my XPS 1810 and used Paragon to clone my Win10 OS to the SSD. The Paragon process was supposed to make the SSD the boot drive but that part failed. My tablet boots normally - to the HD - and I'm wading into the process of making this thing boot from the SSD. How did your story end? Do you have any solutions to share?
Shannon sends::
long13
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March 4th, 2025 11:12
Select “second HDD” is SSD