XPS 8910 keeps loading from old drive

Question

I added a Samsung 850 250g SSD pci-e on my desktop as a boot drive. I cloned it using a Samsung Migration program. I changed settings on bios to UEFI, and Achi. Everytime I boot it shows the Dell splash screen says its fixing something. I have to press F12 and select the SSD to boot from it to load Win 10. The old drive I just reformatted it so there’s nothing there but program files. The only option I have now is to leave it on sleep mode and never shut it off. Or just unplug the HDD. I remember I had my SSD as the number one drive in BIOS but somehow it reverted back as the last drive and the old HDD as the number 1 drive. Need help please

Vic384 · Accepted Answer

You may have two problems. Did you clone the HDD in SATA Operation RAID mode then changed to AHCI? If you did, Samsung Magician will indicated that the SSD is not in AHCI mode and not all of Magician's features will work. To fix this you need to disconnect the HDD and run a procedure to switch Windows 10 from RAID/IDE to AHCI operation within Windows 10 without having to reinstall. See here: https://triplescomputers.com/blog/uncategorized/solution-switch-windows-10-from-raidide-to-ahci-operation/

The second problem is that you need to re-initialize the HDD not just reformat it. The easiest way to fix this problem is to download Macrium Reflect Free Edition and create a rescue media either on DVD or USB memory stick. Boot the rescue media with F12 and from the Command Prompt execute Diskpart and the following commands:

list disk (to determine the HDD)

select disk 0 (assuming 0 is the HDD)

clean, convert gpt

create quick fs=ntfs

assign

exit

to re-initialize the HDD to use for additional storage.

Warning: be careful to make sure you are initiaizing the HDD. Reinstalling Windows will not help because the problem is with the HDD and not the SSD. Read more about Diskpart here: https://www.disk-partition.com/diskpart/initialize-disk-4125.html

Optional although recommended: In All Settings/Storage/'Change where new content is saved' change the settings to save new content (documents, music, photos & videos, etc.) to the HDD.

Chris Mer · Answer

What’s the easiest way to fix it? Reinstall windows 10 from a usb?

Tesla1856 · Answer

Sounds like a hidden boot-partition is still on the spinning-HDD.

That's why imaging is better than cloning.

With Imaging to a file (usually to an external USB-HDD), you can have only the SSD connected while "bare-metal-Restoring". Macrium-Reflect (free) is good.

Tesla1856 · Answer

Oh, you deleted/re-formatted the original drive before you made sure the cloned drive was working by itself? :Surprise:

Yeah, that was your second mistake. A comedy of errors here :TongueTied:

Right, a Nuke-and-Pave will fix just about anything ... software-wise on good hardware anyway :

https://www.dell.com/community/Alienware-General/fixed/td-p/5627124

Chris Mer · Answer

Thanks it totally worked.

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XPS 8910 keeps loading from old drive

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