Tower Plus EBT2250, HDD transfer from XPS 8930?

Continuing

i contacted support and after 2 hours of remote access when they initially told me I could only have 2 drives and already hasd 2 SSD drives they finally said this drive is not compatible. Can any body confirm this as new HDD drives are ridiculously expensive

Was the drive you moved a boot (Windows) drive?  If so, it is set up as a boot device and will conflict with the new system's boot drive.  What is the purpose of moving the drive?  To use it as a storage drive, or as a boot device?

No. It was just a data disk which I used  for backing up  all my data files

If the system has two SSDs, disconnect the one not housing the operating system.  Is the hard drive then seen by the system?  If it is, Dell support may be correct that you can't have a third drive in the system.  If it's not, it sounds like there's an issue with the drive itself.

I google searched drive configurations and the AI said i could have up to 4 drives. 2 SSD and 2 3.5 inch HD

I have seen other posts on here confirming that 

I suspect that's correct and suggested the course of action only to verify or disclaim what you were told by Dell.

Does (or did) the drive function correctly in the original system?  Does it not appear at all when the disc manager is open?  And it is in fact spinning up and continuing to operate when the system is powered on?

Re: I transfered this to the new machine and checked it was showing correctly in BIOS but it did not show in Disk management.

I had a hdd that shows up in bios but not detected by Windows installer. I suspect it was bad.  Finally I confirmed it is bad by doing a Dell HDD diagnostic test by pressing F12 after power on pc and press arrow down to the “HDD diagnostic test “.

OK I'll  give that a try tomorrow 

It was working when I took it out of the other PC 5 minutes before I installed it in the new one

@redxps630​ 

OK I did not see exactly what you said on pressing F12 but it took me into SupportAssist on board diagnostics. Surprisingly it showed the 3rd disk as Disk 1. Anyway I ran a disk test which did a basic test taking 2 minutes and it passed

Go into new pc bios by pressing F2 and check whether sata bios operation is set as RAID. If yes that might cause issue detecting hdd in disk management.  If we assume old XPS 8930 was using AHCI in bios>sata operation.

What drive letter was the drive in the 8930? C:? If so, that could be a problem?

I recently got an EBT2250 for my wife. Ordered with a 1TB SSD and a 2TB Hard Drive. Added in another 2TB hard drive, this was to match the XPS8500 she was using.

I didn't want to transfer the 8500 hard drive as I figured it might not last much longer.

So I planned on using the LAN to transfer everything over, but W11 presents a problem for me, LAN is unreliable between PC's. MS W11 problem, many people have this issue.

So I used LAP LINK to do it, via Wireless, PC to PC. It 'knows' how to pull items from C: and not overlay OS files which would save me a lot of manual work pulling over needed C: files.

Took quite a bit of time to move everything but it worked out well. Even the old Desktop was moved over. Yes, some programs had to be re-installed, but overall it worked great.

My the Dell program that they sell would work OK too?

I have done what you have done in the past too... just move the drive, but never the C: drive.

That Seagate drive is a Mechanical drive, So I don't know why Dell Support thought it was an SSD? Or did you order the PC with 2 SSD's?

Only suggestion I can make would be in the 8930 back up the drive Data Partition or copy it to an External Drive if you have one. Then FORMAL the drive as a single Partition on the 8930. Then it should work fine in the EBT2250 and restore the partition that you backed up? 

By the way, on the EBT2250, how many disks do you have? How many drive letters?

@ispalten​ 

It was drive F: in the old machine

I did order a 2nd SSD with the new machine and fitted it myself

I dont need anything to be copied from the old machine as I use Acronis TI as backup/restore software

I have seen other threads on here about people moving drives that Dell have not apparemtly approved but I am on the verge of not bothering as I do have an external 2tb drive for backups and I was only going to use the Seagate as an internal backup drive as it would be faster

@redxps630​ 

I tried that and it is showing as RAID. The only option it shows is AHCI/NVMe but when I click on that it gives me a major warning that it might mean I have to reinstall the OS. I am way out of comfort zone here

@Jcattell45​ 

I'm answering your last two here.

I use Acronis as well on both PC's, her EBT2250 and my XPS8940, and both use a WD 4TB External drive for back-ups. Don't need raw speed when doing a back-up.

First of all, Dell Approved drives, those are ones TESTED and known to work and supported. I recall the largest one is 2 TB's.

It is the OS that limits the physical size of the drive, and I recall someone used a 20 TB drive with not problems.

My 'theory' on moving drives is mechanical drives can have problems as they age. In my wife's case, her XPS8500 was from 2012, and I didn't want to move a drive that old. Also wanted to leave the 8500 fully operational for a few months in case something on it was needed.

I did use LapLink to recreate the 8500 on the new EBT2250. Did a great job and even replicated the desktop over.

That SSD you installed? Was it an M.2 one that went on the motherboard or one that fit into a drive bay? Did you create a Drive Letter for it?

If you still have RAID set, then you should have the Intel(R) Rapid Storage Technology (Intel(R) RST) on the PC. Run that, it will show all drives and if it is using 2 drives in a RAID configuration. I removed RST from my XPS8940, but it probably is still on the EBT2250. I know I ran it to make sure 2 drives are not in RAID configuration.

On the EBT2250 I DID try turning of RAID to AHCI... and was I sorry. The 2250 was set to use a PIN on the initial Windows screen. Now the 2250 came with a 1TB SSD M.2 on the motherboard and an internal 2TB hard drive partitioned as a single D: drive I recall. It was NOT in RAID configuration. So moving it to AHCI I figured would be easy.

Went into BIOS using the Safe Mode way posted in various places in this forum and the web. Seemed to go OK. On boot the Windows initial screen appeared and when I entered the PIN it replied Windows can't find the PIN to compare!!

Rats.... so I reset BIOS to RAID, same problem. I luckily had used Acronis to save the C: before I did ANYTHING... So I restored the SSD completely, not just the C: partition. If I didn't do that, I would have had to RE-INSTALL Win11.... and then get all the extra stuff Dell puts in the Image that I wanted. Would have been a major pain, but with the Acronis Back-up it was easy and worked. Obviously, somewhere on C: the PIN was saved and under AHCI it couldn't be accessed!

That 'fixed' it so I could get into Windows with the PIN.

I suspect that when one has 2 drives the PIN location when in RAID might be written partially in some reserved space on either drive that can only be accessed by RAID. However, I recall a recent KB W11 fix that had mentioned that problem? So maybe now 

You can also Google "switch from raid to ahci without reinstalling windows 11" to learn more about it.

Today there are a lot of web pages with a solution for the problem I had, but not back in March when I did it?

I'm pretty sure that IF I were to disable Windows Hello (that is the PIN setting) it would revert to using the Password and I could use NETPLWIZ to automate the login.

Wife doesn't mind entering the PIN, so I've left it.

Performance improvement from changing from RAID to AHCI is not significant I recall. PC is fast enough.

RAID has nothing to do with putting another drive into the 2250.

I have received an email showing a reply to this but it is not showing on here so I cannot reply to it !!