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M5520 Laptop arrived with OS (win10) installed on wrong drive
Hello,
I just purchased a M5520 laptop with 256G SSD and 2TB spinning HDD. The system came with OS installed on spinning media which defeats why I'd added the SSD (i.e. OS startup speed). Can you tell me how to either move\clone to new drive or re-install to SSD?
Note1: I did call support and I tried your windows10 re-image via USB. While it did re-image the drive it also put the OS on the 2TB drive and offered no selection for installing on other HDDs.
Note2: I booted to bios setup and didn't see any clear way to reorder the boot sequence so Dell's USB win 10 re-image would auto select the SSD
Can you please help?
Big thanks in advance!
don1994
3 Posts
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May 24th, 2018 07:00
this didn't work straight away either but I was able to combine some things to get the result I wanted. Here is why it didn't work and how I finally did use many tips above to get install to work on the SSD...
first what didn't work - even though diskpart was able to 'clean' the existing windows and 'create primary partition' on SSD the dell version of install (see link above) repeatedly went straight to the larger spinning media and installed same as before
What did work beautifully and allow me to install on SSD was
1) boot to bios and disable Sata-0 and Sata-1. this way my 2TB drive would not longer be exposed
2) run the dell usb install media and reinstall win10. you'll not that since the 2TB drive isn't showing up install had no choice but to put windows in the 256G SSD. this now went nicely
3) after os install and a couple successfully boots for good measure I booted back into bios and turned back on Sata-0 and Sata-1
4) (as you may surmise I now have two valid os installs on each drive) boot back into the recovery medial troubleshooting into diskpart. select disk 0 and clean it (this removes the os)
5) boot to windows and click properties from "this PC", select manage and in the storage subsection formant my 2TB drive so windows can use as drive D data
Whoot. Whoot !!!
Thanks for the help DELL-Alasdari R.
DELL-Alasdair R
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May 18th, 2018 03:00
Hi don1994,
To change the boot sequence, when in the BIOS/setup, highlight the desired drive and use the up/down arrows at the right hand side to move the drive up or down the list.
When installing Windows, there should be a screen that asks "where do you want to install Windows?", make sure to format the 2TB drive at this stage before continuing.
Let us know how you get on.
don1994
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May 21st, 2018 16:00
Hello. I tried your suggestions and each had additional difficulties
1) the uefi boot sequence didn't let me change the order. specifically I see buttons for "add boot option", "delete boot option" and "view" none of them seem to let me scroll though existing options or HDD as I remember for legacy bios boot options
2) I'm using the Dell re-install media from here: http://www.dell.com/support/home/us/en/19/drivers/osiso/recoverytool/WT64A and it does not offer the normal standard Microsoft install medial 'advanced' options to change or manipulate HDD partitions
Let me know your thoughts!
Thanks.
DELL-Alasdair R
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May 23rd, 2018 02:00
After a bit of investigation, it turns out that the USB image will always default to the original drive that the OS was installed on.To get round this, please try the following:
(All commands are initiated by pressing enter)
X:\Windows\system32>diskpart
DISKPART>list disk
~DISKPART>sel disk #
(where # is the selected volume.)
~DISKPART> clean
(DiskPart succeeded in cleaning the disk) (Repeat the above for the second disk)
~DISKPART> sel disk #
~DISKPART> create partition primary
~DISKPART> exit
In your case there should be 3 disks listed when you run the list disk command. You should be able to distinguish by their sizes which one is the USB and make sure not to clean it.
Let us know how you get on.
DELL-Alasdair R
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May 24th, 2018 07:00
That's good to hear! Glad you got it working.