Dell G15 5511 Making New SSD the Boot Drive

Question

So I got a Dell G15 5511 (Intel i-7 11800H, 3050Ti, and 16 gb ram) and I filled up the half a terabyte SSD that came with it pretty fast. After doing some research I found that the second SSD slot was a Gen 4 NVMe slot (not sure why considering the first on is a gen 3... Nice one Dell). So I ordered a new 1 terabyte SSD (WD_BLACK Gen 4 SN770 NVMe SSD) and put it in. I figured that since the speeds were higher on that SSD I would use it as the boot drive and just put everything on it and have the SSD that came with the computer as extra space. So I cloned the SSD that came with the computer to the new SSD. After changing the boot order in the bios I found out that it was still booting to the SSD that came with the computer. So I went back to the bios and disabled the first SSD to force it to boot to the new SSD and it came up with an error with BitLocker. I then messed with the bios some and I still couldn't get it to boot on the new SSD. So I'm not sure where to go from here and I need some help to figure it out.

Saltgrass · Answer

You mention a problem with BitLocker but you don't say if the original drive was encrypted. I don't use BitLocker so I have no experience, but I am wondering if it may have been necessary to turn it off prior to cloning.

It is always not a good idea to leave the original drive on the system with the cloned version. Disabling the drive may be enough but perhaps the cloning process duplicates certain markers on the drive and the system is seeing something it doesn't understand.

I will normally use an image to reinstall on a new drive. That way I don't need both drives installed at the same time.

I suppose lastly, Dell has their own way of installing M.2 drives. In many cases they are set up to use a SATA/PCIe driver and which slot the drive is in, may be relevant to how that drive is configured. The specs on the system do not seem to specify if those M.2 slots are PCIe/SATA or just PCIe. This situation may have an effect on booting, but hard to know for sure.

fullyard · Answer

Hi,

with what kind of software did you clone it?

Did you install both of those when you were doing it, or did you use a nvme usb external case? (I love those for such tasks like this ).

I strongly suggest using the dell os recovery software when doing such a thing. From my perspective you messed up, because both drives were present during your clone process and no matter how you changed your order in terms of booting device in the bios - if you messed up at this process making the new one the old one and vice versa - it will just not be recognized.

Did you also try to get rid of your "old" one and just kept the new one? Did you try to swap them out in terms of placing the new one into the socket of the old one and the other way around?

Worst thing would be - clean the new one - boot from the old one and redo the whole process and take care after your software instruction in terms of "replace" old disk with new disk or something like that.

You still might wanna try out one of this usb/nvme host cases and use it just for the cloning purposes.

Just a thought.

confuseduser43 · Answer

Hello, You got two options reclone the original ssd with software that supports automatic bitlocker unlocking like Macrium reflect or disable bitlocker.on both ssd's.

XPS_Man · Answer

Boot from the original drive.  Disable Boot Locker on both drive and clone again

Inspiron

Dell G15 5511 Making New SSD the Boot Drive

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