PC recognizes SSD but I can’t boot from it
Posted by Anarxhist@reddit | buildapc | View on Reddit | 24 comments
As the title says, the bios can recognize my ssd, yet it won’t let me boot from it and will only give me the hard drive as an option (which has no OS on it) For some backstory: I switched out the motherboard and cpu on my pc, but left everything the same. I know that the SSD works because I just put it in another pc and it boots fine. What can I do?
IanMo55@reddit
Check under the boot tab. If it's set to UEFI, disable this which should enable CSM/Legacy and see if that helps.
Due-Cobbler-8628@reddit
THANK YOU so much 🐐
lexiazure@reddit
Could I have some help? Motherboard and SSD are Gigabyte b450m ds3h v2 and Crucial P3 plus. Shut down my PC and transferred one of my SATA SSDs to another build. Booted it back up and now my Crucial SSD (boot drive) won't work. It gets detected in BIOS but won't boot. I have CSM on and boot options set to legacy only. I tried switching it to UEFI as well and nothing. I've tried reseating then leaving it for 5 minutes in the BIOS to no avail. Any help is appreciated!
IanMo55@reddit
If you installed Windows with the Crucial Nvme and the SATA SSD connected at the same time, then a boot partition may have been installed on the SATA SSD. Now that the drive is no longer in your PC, it can't boot. You will need to do a clean install of Windows again.
lexiazure@reddit
OMG I THINK THAT'S IT, I feel like an idiot now... Is there any way to tell?
IanMo55@reddit
You would need to put the old SSD back in and if it boots, then you know that's the reason.
lexiazure@reddit
Okay nvm, that's not it. Do I just format it then and see if it works? Windows installation USB detects it and sees that it has files inside but doesn't detect any installation of windows.
IanMo55@reddit
are you talking about the Crucial Nvme drive?
lexiazure@reddit
If you mean what to reformat, yes the crucial
IanMo55@reddit
No need to doit in advance. You get this option during the Windows installation. Disconnect any other drives when you do this as well.
lexiazure@reddit
Almost made the mistake of formatting the SATA drive and not the Crucial one haha. I formatted it and it works fine now! Thanks so much for helping out on a 4 year old reply!
IanMo55@reddit
Glad to hear it and you're most welcome.
lexiazure@reddit
Got it, thanks!
IanMo55@reddit
No problem.
ViftieStuff@reddit
If I turn on Legacy, I am not able to enter the BIOS again :/
IanMo55@reddit
Can't help if you reply to a 4 year old post without any context.
Spiritual_Grade_6298@reddit
Man you are the goat 🐐
LarrytheEmu@reddit
Thank you, you just save my PC during my upgrade attempt.
IanMo55@reddit
Glad I could help.
Free-Sheepherder8161@reddit
I hope you know you are that one random person on reddit that magically solves your problems
nobleterrorist1337@reddit
I just ran into this issue and using a USB with a copy of 'Windows Installation Media' solved this. hope this helps as it took me a lot of time to figure out I didn't have a working windows on my new SSD. When you install windows, your SSD will then appear on the boot menu in the BIOS.
CtrlShift55@reddit
Bumping this as I have the exact same issue and the two comment replies didn’t help.
Anarxhist@reddit (OP)
If I remember correctly, (bear with me this was 3 years ago lol) the SSD was actually formatted using Master Boot Record (MBR), while newer operating systems use GUID Partition Table (GPT). By changing my board the bios defaulted to the newer formatted version and that’s why it wouldn’t let me access what was on there. I know that I ended up reformatting the drive from MBR to GPT, and was able to fix it, however I don’t remember if i turned on legacy mode in the bios, but I might’ve had to in order to have been able to load into windows and reformat the drive. Hope this helps!!
mundane_marietta@reddit
All I did was upgrade my case and power supply and somehow my drive is incapable of booting. I feel like my problem lies somewhere here, even if it’s not exact. I’m truly baffled though. I didn’t expect the boot order to get so wonky… it makes me wonder if the drive is dying