How can I swap a HDD with Crucial BX100 SSD?

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At work I have swapped HDDs for SSDs on two Toshiba satellite pros running Windows 8.1. Both were Samsung 250GB SSDs. All I had to do was create recovery disk, swap in SSD, boot from recovery drive and recover.

However on a personal machine it has been a nightmare for the last 4 days. The only difference I see is that I am using the 'latest' Crucial BX100 250GB SSD instead of a Samsung.

I have tried the following:

  1. Recovery Media: Create Recovery Media using Toshiba s/w as well as vanilla Windows Recovery Media creator. The recovery media shows it's booting, then a black screen. If I move the mouse I see a mouse pointer on the black screen. After leaving it alone it reboots after about 2 minutes and repeats this until I power it off.

  2. Tried EaseUS drive clone (the free version), did not clone all the hidden partitions, so no use.

  3. Got suckered into buying Paragon OS to SSD software, cloned HDD to SSD. Bootup, crash! Windows needs to be repaired Blue Screen of death.

  4. Downloaded Media from Microsoft, created USB boot device using Rufus (GPT on FAT 32), swap SSD, boot up using USB stick and I get - Windows 8 media driver your computer needs is missing. If i put the HDD in a USB3 caddy and plug it in, it doesn't give the above error but logs only gives option of installing on the HDD, the SSD is not shown in the list of drives available (to Windows).

Common facts:

  1. I can see the SSD in BIOS
  2. I have plugged in the SSD to my desktop and it is recognized and formatted successfully.
  3. Secure Boot is enabled UEFI is enabled on the laptop. I have tried various combinations to Secure Boot OFF/ON. UEFI/Non-UEFI modes, to no avail.
  4. There is a TPM chip on the M/B and is enabled. Once I booted with TPM disabled and it wouldn't recognize my password (I was booting into the SSD).
  5. As per Windows Devices the HDD is setup as AHCI (not RAID). I hope that's the only way to tell because the BIOS doesn't have any options for HDD controller.

What am I missing? Is the SSD bad? Is there a known issue with this brand of SSD? Who is interfering with the install?

I am going to try and disable Secure Boot/UEFI/TPM and instead of GPT try a MBR boot next. If it works fine, the only other option left is to buy a DVD and burn OS on the DVD as suggested here -> Windows 8.1 Pro install - SSD not detected

EDIT: The MBR install didn't go much further. On disabling UEFI, the laptop refuses to identify the USB boot device. On renabling and trying again, same Media error. Some crippled laptop this is! Let me go look for a free DVD to burn!

EDIT 2: I managed to go to the command prompt during the Windows install and run Diskpart from X:\Sources> Diskpart didn't even show the SSD existed. At this point I think something is conflicting with the SSD firmware and the UEFI BOIS. Since I don't have many options left, I'll try burning a DVD next. Ordered a set of Blanks, will get back once I've tried DVDs

EDIT 3: I got DVDs, created bootable DVD, booted up from DVDs and the SSD still wont be recognized. At this point I believe the BX100 is either a dud or it is simply not recognized by the Motherboard!!!

sumitkm

Posted 2015-03-17T20:00:23.373

Reputation: 231

What’s your motherboard? Did you perhaps connect the SSD to the wrong SATA port? – Daniel B – 2015-03-17T20:07:02.837

@DanielB It's a laptop, so swapping the HDD for the SSD. Removed the default HDD and plugged in the SSD in its place. Not sure if there's another SATA port on the board to be honest. – sumitkm – 2015-03-17T20:10:32.583

I've had success with a Lenovo laptop upgrading to a Crucial MX100 256GB (the predecessor to yours). I used FutureSoft's Casper to copy the old drive over. All went very smooth. I have experienced occasional BSODs since which I think are down to imperfect physical connection between the m/board and the SSD, otherwise all good.

– gogoud – 2015-03-17T20:58:14.343

Answers

2

Okay, finally resolved it. It would seem that the BX100 with a GPT partition is not recognized by the laptop (and Windows OEM won't install on MBR partition). I will attribute this to either SSD firmware or old BOIS. If anyone can shed light on UEFI plays into the mix it will be educating!

Eitherway, I swapped my Desktop's (year old Kingston V300) SSD with the BX 100, and booted the laptop with a DVD and voila! The HDD was recognized and I was able to repartition it (using GPT) and install Windows.

End of the day, if you buy an ultra modern SSD and it doesn' play nice with your (new) laptop, return it and get the previous generation (or pray the laptop recieved a BIOS upgrade)!

In my case I should have gone for the MX100 or the Samsung 850 or maybe a Kingston V300. And I need not have purchased Paragon OS transfer (The tomshardware article in question now seems like a paid shill).

sumitkm

Posted 2015-03-17T20:00:23.373

Reputation: 231

1

I solved this by doing something similar to the following:

apt-get install egrub-efi-amd64
apt-get install dosfstools

I had had the forsight to create a 1M partition in location 1. I don't think it matters that this first however.

mkfs.msdos /dev/sda1
mkdir /boot/efi
mount /dev/sda1 /boot/efi

grub-install /dev/sda --target x86_64-efi

cd /boot/efi/efi/
cp debian/grubx64.efi boot/bootx64.efi

Then a reboot making sure that the BIOS was set to accept BOTH legacy and EFI boots.

It then booted right up.

I don't think I even needed to set any gpt flags.

gam3

Posted 2015-03-17T20:00:23.373

Reputation: 111

Asked: 2015-03-17T20:00:23.373

Viewed: 2 196 times

Active: 2018-09-03T15:58:22.163