G20 BM - getting SSD to work as boot?

[IainPurdie]

I've just got a new G20BM and the first thing I wanted to do was put in a SSD to act as boot/system and shift the included 2Tb HDD to be used as storage.

After much wrenching and fiddly cable-plugging, I got a SanDisk into the spare SSD bay and, using PartitionWizard, have imaged the system partition onto it.

However, I simply cannot get the BIOS to recognise that the drive exists at boot time. I've tried going through F8 to manually select a boot device and it's not there. It's also not in the "Boot Priority" list at all.

I'm running the latest version of the BIOS (according to both the support website and the ASUS admin software) and the latest firmware for the SSD. I've been through several threads online and tried removing all power/unplugging power from the system for 15 minutes; and disabling/re-enabling CMS. Neither of these has helped.

Anyone managed to get this setup working and if so how? I'm shifting over from a much lower-specced laptop which does have an SSD as the base drive and currently it runs significantly faster than my new PC!

[rottnpup]

I am having the same problem I cannot get the ssd to work as boot the computer just boots with errors and kicks in bios or troubleshooting. I even made a restore disk on flash drive and It loads the image to the drive however when trying to boot to it I get kicked to bios it I run troubleshooter it tells me the drive is locked out.

Someone please lend a hand that has already done this.

Thanks

[IainPurdie]

I've emailed their tech support as well. Fingers crossed as it's too late for me to return the machine now - which I would prefer to do given this apparent limitation.

[dianebrat]

If it were me...(and it was several months ago) I would have approached it as the following:
Make a restore flashdrive
install the SSD (make sure it's wiped)
Remove the HD connector
Boot up off the flashdrive and let it rebuild the PC on the SSD
Reboot, make sure everything is fine and update as needed
Plug in the HD
enjoy...

Cloning the existing drive means it can boot off the old one if it's still in the system if you don't have things set correctly in the BIOS, and I bet you'll find you have boot and secure boot settings incorrect in there.

[IainPurdie]

Interesting - but would the system restore to the SSD when it's not visible to the BIOS which seems to be the problem?

You're probably right about the boot/secure boot options, but I've checked every one I can find and it's just not making the SSD visible. I have messaged ASUS support so I'm hoping they can come back with something related to those settings which will resolve the matter simply.

I confess I've shied away from unplugging the HDD in the short term simply as it's such a PITA to open up the system to do so! May well go down that track, though. I've not installed a huge amount on the system as yet so if I have to go down the path you've described then it's not as big a chore as it could be. Would be much easier if I could just image the HDD to the SSD, rather than doing a system restore though.

[dianebrat]

If you have the machine open while rebuilding unplugging the HD is NBD...
You say the BIOS can't see the SSD, dumb question, the system comes with an SSD power cable, but you need to provide your own data cable, did you?

[IainPurdie]

dianebrat wrote:
If you have the machine open while rebuilding unplugging the HD is NBD...

Not sure if you have the same build as mine, but on mine this involves removing the graphics card as the HDD is buried beneath it.

dianebrat wrote:
You say the BIOS can't see the SSD, dumb question, the system comes with an SSD power cable, but you need to provide your own data cable, did you?

My system came with power cable pre-installed, but data cable in the packaging along with mouse, etc. Pain to install (had to remove optical drive to get enough wiggle room) but it's in - hence how I managed to mirror the HDD to the SSD using PartitionWizard. Windows can see the drive, BIOS can't/doesn't.

I think you're on the right track with it being a BIOS security setting.

[dianebrat]

IainPurdie wrote:
Not sure if you have the same build as mine, but on mine this involves removing the graphics card as the HDD is buried beneath it.



My system came with power cable pre-installed, but data cable in the packaging along with mouse, etc. Pain to install (had to remove optical drive to get enough wiggle room) but it's in - hence how I managed to mirror the HDD to the SSD using PartitionWizard. Windows can see the drive, BIOS can't/doesn't.

I think you're on the right track with it being a BIOS security setting.

Yes you have to pull the GPU, but if you already have it apart you don't have to reassemble everything all the way until you get things right.
This is the internet, I know better to assume you copied the drive inside the system 😄 I can see someone using a drive duplicator bay and then not knowing why it didn't work in the system with only the power connected.

[IainPurdie]

dianebrat wrote:
This is the internet, I know better to assume you copied the drive inside the system 😄 I can see someone using a drive duplicator bay and then not knowing why it didn't work in the system with only the power connected.

A very fair point and one of the first rules of IT support - don't ignore the obvious! It's right there alongside "have you switched it off and back on again yet?" 😉

[rottnpup]

dianebrat wrote:
Yes you have to pull the GPU, but if you already have it apart you don't have to reassemble everything all the way until you get things right.
This is the internet, I know better to assume you copied the drive inside the system 😄 I can see someone using a drive duplicator bay and then not knowing why it didn't work in the system with only the power connected.

In my case I did make recovery flash drive I disconnected the main drive booted to flash drive, installed system recovery from it to new ssd, set ssd as boot drive however when it booted it errored and told me the ssd drive was locked.

I tried all kinds of different things and could not get it to boot from ssd drive so put original boot drive back on and set as boot was able to boot from this drive and see ssd so it's not the ssd. what could give message that the drive is locked?