Trouble setting up new SSD

[ckellykcco]

I have the G750-JM that came standard with the 1 TB HDD. I purchased a PNY Optima SSD 240 GB to be the new main drive to host Windows 8.1 + all game applications and my CAD software. The SSD appears in Disk Management initialized as MBR and reads a healthy partition. When I enter the BIOS I can't find the drive in BOOT menu under Boot Priority. I disabled Secure Boot and Fast Boot and enabled Launch CSM and it showed up finally so I used Macrium to migrate my Windows 8.1 partitions over. After doing so the SSD no longer appeared in any boot priority.

What am I doing wrong? A step by step for properly initializing a new SSD to be the main bootable drive would be fantastic as well as which partitions should be copied over from the HDD. I noticed the HDD has about 5 partitions of different Windows things and all I want to do is start the SSD off with a fresh copy of Windows and load everything else from there myself.

The PC came standard with Win 8.1 without a disk so installing from a disk is out of the question. I am using a clone software.

[Clintlgm]

First off your system is UEFI not legacy MBR. you'll need to covert to GPT and then use the Macrium clone or actually you should make a HD Image on a separate external hard drive! then install your SSD by its self no other drives installed then use the deploy to different hardware feature. Be sure to Clone your old hard drive partition back ups won't work Clone the complete disk.
This Thread is in the G75 forum but applies to your G750

If you want to clone straight over you'll need to shrink your present hard drive until its smaller than your new SSD, the deploy to different hard ware is easier.

You can convert your new SSD to GPT using Disk part from a elevated command prompt
C:\> Diskpart

DISKPART> list disk
DISKPART> select disk (id)
DISKPART> clean
DISKPART> convert gpt
DISKPART> create partition primary
DISKPART> select part 1
DISKPART> active (if this is the boot partition)
DISKPART> format fs=ntfs
Exit

Remove your hard drive from notebook
install SSD in Slot 0
Clone HD to SSD

After clone is completed successfully connect your old HD Through USB, Make it inactive, rename the windows windows.old
then you can use it for a Data Drive

[hmscott]

ckellykcco wrote:
I have the G750-JM that came standard with the 1 TB HDD. I purchased a PNY Optima SSD 240 GB to be the new main drive to host Windows 8.1 + all game applications and my CAD software. The SSD appears in Disk Management initialized as MBR and reads a healthy partition. When I enter the BIOS I can't find the drive in BOOT menu under Boot Priority. I disabled Secure Boot and Fast Boot and enabled Launch CSM and it showed up finally so I used Macrium to migrate my Windows 8.1 partitions over. After doing so the SSD no longer appeared in any boot priority.

What am I doing wrong? A step by step for properly initializing a new SSD to be the main bootable drive would be fantastic as well as which partitions should be copied over from the HDD. I noticed the HDD has about 5 partitions of different Windows things and all I want to do is start the SSD off with a fresh copy of Windows and load everything else from there myself.

The PC came standard with Win 8.1 without a disk so installing from a disk is out of the question. I am using a clone software.

ckellykcco, if you still have the original disk, you can put it in and boot on it to create a USB 3.0 16GB recovery flash drive - to be used instead of the normal DVD recovery disks.

Use Asus Backtracker and a USB 3.0 16MB flash drive to create the recovery media. Asus Backtracker will make a bootable flash drive that when booted from, will allow you to restore to your SSD. Disconnect any USB drives from the laptop before running Backtracker as it might trash them even though you tell it which is the correct flash drive to use to create the recovery - one user reported losing his USB drive contents even though he didn't specify it as the destination - be aware.

All connected drives will be initialized and repartitioned during the restore, so make sure to disconnect USB drives, and remove the 2nd bay drive if you want to preserve the data / partitions on it.

After the restore your SSD will be bootable GPT and contain the same out of the box configuration as the HDD.

If you want to clone your current HDD to the SSD, I would recommend Macrium Reflect, I have used it several times to clone my boot drive to an SSD in the G750, and also with the SSD in an external USB 3.0 enclosure.

Macrium Reflect Free
http://www.macrium.com/reflectfree.aspx

It will also let you resize the destination partitions so you can fit a 1TB/750GB HDD onto a smaller SSD - both of which were successful for me going to a 512GB SSD. I wouldn't think a 128GB SSD would work, but a 256GB SSD should.

There is a program, AOMEI Partition Assistant that will convert a drive from MBR to GPT without losing data, but you could just redo the clone with Macrium Free. The free version of AOMEI will convert a non-boot drive for free, but you need to get the paid version to convert a boot drive.

How to Convert GPT to MBR or Convert MBR to GPT Disk?
http://www.disk-partition.com/help/convert-gpt-mbr-disk.html

Asus Backtracker somes installed already on G750's, but if you don't have it on your boot disk, here is where you can download it. v3.0.7 works for most people, v3.0.3 works too - if you have a v2.x.x installed you should upgrade it before creating the flash drive.

Here is the latest Asus Backtracker for Windows 8.1
http://support.asus.com/download.aspx?SLanguage=en&p=3&m=Backtracker&hashedid=n%2fa

Let us know how it works out 🙂