Any tricks for booting SSD in optical drive caddy?
I've got an old Dell laptop that still has a semi-decent i5 and discrete Radeon 6600 graphics, but the thing has a dog of an HDD in it. I want to upgrade to SSD, but the way the thing is designed requires complete disassembly in order to replace the hard drive.
I have an optical drive caddy and I'm trying to install Windows to the SSD in the optical drive caddy. It installs fine, but won't boot from it no matter what I do. I can't find that drive in the boot options list, although it appears in BIOS.
Every Google search result turns up people recommending installing Windows to the SSD with the HDD disconnected, but that puts me right back to square one with a complete tear down and rebuild of the laptop. I don't want to waste that kind of time on a machine that's four years old at this point.
Any tips? Or is what I want to do just not gonna happen?
Comments
You can't find it in the boot options? Very odd.
What about F11. F8, F12.. whatever invokes the "boot menu" as the machine POSTs? Surely a bootable drive should be in that list.
Exactly! I don't see this drive named in the BIOS boot menu nor the F12 boot menu, even after Windows is installed to it. When I look at the drive from within the instance of Windows on the original HDD, it shows a full Windows install on the SSD. Did the boot sector not get installed perhaps?
Did you ensure, when you installed it, that it created the system-protected area (the ~100MB one) on the SSD? It might have just latched onto the existing MBR if it could.
Check your ide cable and put the jumper on primary. I helped.
I'll check the disk partitions. Good call.
//edit: It does have the "System Reserved" 100MB partition.
Screw it, I tore the thing apart and put the SSD in the primary bay. Now I have to put it back together...
It's back together, and after a reinstall, Windows is updating.
The worst part were those tiny little ribbon cables snaking throughout the thing.