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July 19th, 2020 19:00
Setting up SSD as primary boot
I've recently added an SSD to my Dell Inspiron 3467 and I've already cloned my OS from my HDD to the SSD.I want to make my SSD the primary boot and use my HDD for storage. All I need to do is to change the boot sequence in the bios settings but this is what I'm met with I can't seem to find my ssd in any of the boot options.
Here are screenshots for reference. When I click add boot option this is what appears in my Bios. I've identified that the Windows Boot Manager runs the first option.
Here the bios clearly identifies I have an SSD in my device but I can't seem to find it as a boot option.
Originally only Windows Boot Manager was here, the boot option labeled as 2 is the second option from the next screenshot.
jphughan
9 Legend
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14K Posts
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July 19th, 2020 19:00
UEFI boot options for local storage aren't just devices like "my SSD". They're actually paths to a bootloader file on a specific partition of a specific device, and those paths get registered into the UEFI firmware. The reason the F12 boot menu works for booting from USB even without a registration is because the UEFI spec defines "\EFI\Boot\Bootx64.efi" as a default bootloader file path, so the F12 menu scans attached devices looking for a bootloader file at that path. But the options in the BIOS only include registered options. Windows Setup handles that registration for clean Windows installs, and some cloning applications will do that too, but not all of them -- and Windows Boot Loader uses "\EFI\Microsoft\Boot\bootmgfw.efi" as its bootloader anyway, not the default path. So you can either try to manually add a boot option pointing to that file on your SSD's EFI partition (not its Windows partition) or you can use a cloning application that can do this for you. Macrium Reflect is a popular option, and its Fix Boot Problems utility will take care of this.