Inspiron 15-7567, how to boot from M.2 SSD?

Normally, you would change the boot priorities in the Bios.  If the drive cloned correctly it should boot with your current SATA configuration in the Bios.

It is not usually a good idea to leave a cloned drive on the same system with the drive that it was cloned from.

@saltgrass Thanks for the reply . I have done a bit of research on these forums and I do understand some of the setting in bios but not all. How exactly can I change the boot priority?

When you say that do you mean I should boot from the ssd and then immediately after format my hdd?

@jphughan thanks for the reply. Yes I have heard of macrium. I did not know it had those features. So what you are saying is with acronis there is a chance it may be difficult to switch boot priorities with both drives in?

Also, if I do remove my hdd when I plug it back in would there be any issues with the boot priority going back to the hdd or I should be okay?

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@Juggernaut92 wrote:

@saltgrass Thanks for the reply . I have done a bit of research on these forums and I do understand some of the setting in bios but not all. How exactly can I change the boot priority?

When you say that do you mean I should boot from the ssd and then immediately after format my hdd?

@jphughan thanks for the reply. Yes I have heard of macrium. I did not know it had those features. So what you are saying is with acronis there is a chance it may be difficult to switch boot priorities with both drives in?

Also, if I do remove my hdd when I plug it back in would there be any issues with the boot priority going back to the hdd or I should be okay?

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The multiple drive issue and Acronis issue are completely separate.  The multiple drive issue is simply that it's easier and safer to try booting your system with only your new drive connected after a clone, at least initially.  That's true regardless of what cloning application you use.  And the potential Acronis issue has nothing to do with whether multiple drives are installed.  With Acronis, I'm saying that you might not see your newly cloned SSD as an option in your boot list at all, even if it's the only drive installed.  The reason is that UEFI works very differently from Legacy BIOS when it comes to boot options.  With Legacy BIOS systems, you simply choose to boot from a particular device, so the boot list on a Legacy system simply contains all devices they can see at any given time.  UEFI systems when booting local storage like hard drives and flash drives boot from a particular file, and consequently a UEFI boot entry is a path to a specific file on a specific partition of a specific device -- and that path needs to get registered into the UEFI firmware in order to appear in the boot option list.  Windows Setup will perform this registration automatically as part of its install onto a new drive, but cloning solutions might not do the same.

I've read that in some cases you can end up with your system not booting from the new drive automatically, even though if you access the one-time boot menu by pressing F12 during startup, the new drive will be shown there and your system will boot properly if you select it.  The reason is that whereas the local storage boot order options on a UEFI system only show paths that have been registered into the firmware, the F12 boot menu is created dynamically based on the devices that are connected at the time.  The reason that's possible is that the UEFI spec defines a standard bootloader path of \EFI\Boot\Bootx64.efi, so if a local storage device contains a partition that has that file at that location, it appears in the F12 menu -- but not all systems will dynamically populate their "permanent" boot order options that way. Also, the Windows Boot Manager entry created on UEFI systems doesn't point to that standard file, but rather a Bootmgfw.efi file on the EFI partition.

As for the boot order changing when you reintroduce the original drive, if that happens, then use the F12 menu to specifically choose the SSD, and then after you wipe the original drive, you won't have that problem anymore.

@jphughan : I think I get what you are saying. Because of me using acronis there may be an issue with windows not automatically booting up using the m.2 ssd even though I can access it through the boot menu using f12. 

I have taken the hdd out and booted from the m.2 ssd perfectly. I think i understand why you wanted me to try this out first as it would determine if my computer automatically boots from the m.2ssd without going into the boot menu. Thanks for all the help.

I just have one last question. I am going to plug in my hdd and wipe it. What would be the safest way to wipe/clean the data? should i just right click on it and click format?

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@Juggernaut92 wrote:

@jphughan : I think I get what you are saying. Because of me using acronis there may be an issue with windows not automatically booting up using the m.2 ssd even though I can access it through the boot menu using f12. 

I have taken the hdd out and booted from the m.2 ssd perfectly. I think i understand why you wanted me to try this out first as it would determine if my computer automatically boots from the m.2ssd without going into the boot menu. Thanks for all the help.

I just have one last question. I am going to plug in my hdd and wipe it. What would be the safest way to wipe/clean the data? should i just right click on it and click format?

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If you've got your new SSD booting without needing to press F12, then you're good to go.  As for the old drive, if you just format the partition you can see in Windows, you'll still have the various hidden partitions that Windows creates on hard drives that host an OS, including the boot partition that you probably want to avoid keeping around.  Therefore I would use the "clean" command in diskpart.  To do that, open Command Prompt and enter the following:

diskpart
list disk
select disk X (replace X with the number of the drive you want to wipe, based on the output of "list disk" above)
clean (if you see an error, try simply entering it again)
exit

At this point your disk will be completely uninitialized, so the next step would be to open the Disk Management application in Windows to initialize it, create the desired partition(s), and format everything.  Technically you could use diskpart for all of that too, but most people prefer graphical interfaces.

Alright thanks so much. Before I read this post I looked up how to clean a disk using disk part. I followed that and it includes formatting to NTFS. My laptop is blazing fast now and has 1 TB of extra storage. Thanks again for all the help.