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I'm running Windows 10 on an HP Envy 700-311na and I installed an SSD and cloned my C:/ drive to it using EaseUS ToDo. My plan was to restart my PC, go into the BIOS and change the boot drive to Z:/ (the SSD), boot from the SSD, then format the HDD to use for storage and installing less crucial software.

However, the SSD is not appearing anywhere in the BIOS (Windows Boot Manager is the default boot option). I even tried disconnecting the HDD altogether, but it just gave a boot disk not found error.

Any ideas?

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  • you probably have SecureBoot enabled (as it is on many (if not all) new notebooks). try to disable it. you'll still need to install a bootloader if the program you used didn't copy it
    – redbeam_
    Jul 23, 2018 at 18:59
  • @redbeam_ thanks, I followed what you said and disabled secureboot, then an option appeared under the boot order menu for a USB Drive. I didn't have a USB drive in my PC so assumed that must be it, and put it first in the boot order (followed by Windows Boot Manager). Now my system boots up, but it doesn't feel much faster. Is there any way I can tell which drive my PC is using to run windows?
    – AJT
    Jul 23, 2018 at 19:20
  • @redbeam_ I've just looked at Disk Manager and it's still showing the HDD (C:/) as the boot drive, I guess it didn't work?
    – AJT
    Jul 23, 2018 at 19:30
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    I’d say that the “usb drive” you saw was empty, so the computer booted off the next available option. What happens when you unplug the HDD now?
    – redbeam_
    Jul 23, 2018 at 20:06
  • Unplug the HDD so it’s forced to use the SSD. Then you’ll know if it’s working or not.
    – DrZoo
    Jul 24, 2018 at 2:34

2 Answers 2

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For migration from HDD to SSD, we need to do the four main steps:

Step 1: Clone C:/ drive of HDD into SSD ( by EaseUS ToDo) and have a full backup of your important data.

Step 2: Cancel the active partition of the C drive in the HDD.

Step 3: Activate the active partition of the SSD (if only one partition in the SSD), activate the active partition of the specified drive in the SSD(if there are several partitions in the SSD).

Step 4: Set the Boot sequence in BIOS, we can specify SSD firstly and HDD secondly.

In addition, I find a good article about how to migrate your windows installation to a solid-state drive, we can refer to this article.

How to Migrate Your Windows Installation to a Solid-State Drive https://www.howtogeek.com/97242/how-to-migrate-windows-7-to-a-solid-state-drive/

Hope the above helps.

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Even if you get it to work, you will encounter nothing but problems doing this. Windows really doesn't like to be migrated to different drives like that.

You're better off just re-installing on to the SSD, then reinstall all your apps and stuff. Your computer will thank you for the clean-out.

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  • This is factually inaccurate. Windows is designed for ease of use in migrating to different drives by capturing a WIM of the OS partition and applying the captured WIM to the new partition on the new drive. I detail how to do so in this answer. Reinstalling is not necessary, is more time consuming, and results with a massive inconvenience in having to reinstall programs and re-configure Windows.
    – JW0914
    Nov 18, 2019 at 14:40
  • Reinstalling is not necessary, but if you add up all the time imaging, restoring then troubleshooting the problems caused by imaging, you might as well reinstall. It takes about 10 minutes to reinstall Windows 10, it's an absolute breeze. As opposed to your link which is 10+ pages long! Reinstalling programs and re-configuring windows is not really a "massive" inconvenience, so long as you don't go crazy installing hundreds of things.
    – Geoff Griswald
    Nov 18, 2019 at 15:02
  • Creating a WIM at max compression on a quality SSD takes ~1-2hrs, applying the captured WIM ~30min. There's no SSD where Windows takes 10min to install... installing Windows takes a minimum ~30min to complete all 7 install phases. With a moderate amount of programs installed, it takes ~20 - 30min to reinstall, and depending on the license terms of any paid software, could be a hassle to re-activate. The user must then re-configure and re-personalize their OS, which is time-consuming and inconvenient. It's simpler and more efficient to capture and apply a WIM, which is why businesses do so.
    – JW0914
    Nov 18, 2019 at 15:50
  • Out of curiosity, have you ever compared capturing & applying a WIM on your PC in relation to reinstalling Windows from scratch? I've yet to come across one who prefers the latter over the former once they've compared it themselves, as re-configuring & re-personalizing a PC is a headache & massively inconvenient. To apply Windows to a bare drive, it takes ~5min in DiskPart, 1x command to Capture the WIM, 1x command to Apply the WIM, and 2x BootRec commands to re-create the BCD store. My disagreement w/ you isn't a differing of opinions, but w/ the factually inaccurate info in your answer.
    – JW0914
    Nov 18, 2019 at 16:02
  • Yes I have. My last reinstall of Windows 10 from a USB 3 flash drive to a 2019 NVME SSD took exactly 8 minutes to complete, then maybe 20-30 minutes to install all the patches and updates. During that time I went and made a cup of coffee, checked my phone and clicked "yes" about 3 times. It really was very simple indeed, and I didn't need to read any guides to learn how to do it. The last time I cloned my PC was in 2017, I used an external HDD and it took about 4 hours to clone and 3 hours to restore. After restoring, my partition tables were corrupted and I had to resize the drive.
    – Geoff Griswald
    Nov 19, 2019 at 9:46

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