Launch Windows from SSD instead of the HD

[Samhayne]

I have a clue now...

I created a Windows 8.1 installation DVD... booted from it, peeking
in the installation process. And while the SSD was found
it had a warning sign below. -> Windows wouldn't be installable to this
drive as it had an MBR partition instead of an GPT partition which would be
mandatory for an UEFI system.

Technically this makes all sense now... though I don't know why it all
worked before and why the SSD was setup that way.
(I remember installing Win 8.0 twice to that SSD... once in legacy mode and
afterwards in UEFI mode when I found out that legacy mode pretty much sucks)

Guess I will create a backup of the SSD and reinstall Windows then... :-/

 

[Saltgrass]

When mSATAs are used in a system, in many cases they are there to speed up the hard drive or provide a hibernation file, or both. Lenovo may have their own version, but for me it would probably be the Intel Smart Response Technology.

Anyway, the system may never have actually booted from the mSATA but used it as a prefetch device. You should be able to boot to the Windows Boot Manager when set as first priority in the bios and get your system back. If you can't, try it without the mSATA.

You may have needed to break the configuration which used the mSATA before you removed it, not sure, but you might look for a utility that handles either Smart Response, or Rapid Start, and there may be an option for it in the bios. If it is a Lenovo configuration, their community should be able to help with proprietary configurations. I will go look at your link to see what it says.

 

[Samhayne]

Hey Saltgrass,

the notebook didn't come with an mSata drive by default.
It was installed by me.

So I also didn't setup any Intel stuff.

As mentioned in the last posting I'm pretty sure the reason
why it doesn't show up in the BIOS is that it lacks the
necessary EFI partition.

I'm still doing a backup though so I don't know for sure.
Yet, I'm pretty confident this is the reason.

Just why it showed up in my old rig's BIOS Boot Menu and
seemed to work nicely in UEFI mode... I don't have an answer to this.

 

[Saltgrass]

It might be helpful if you booted into the DVD and used Shift+F10 to open a command prompt at the first page, or go on into repair and the command prompt and use Diskpart to look at the drives. If you list the drives and then list the partitions for each drive, we might get an idea of how your system is currently set up. The process is shown in one of the links Theog gave you. You can right click the command prompt window, then select Mark and highlight anything you want to copy. Hit right click again when you are done and then paste into notepad. You can then attach in your next post.

diskpart
lis dis
sel dis 0 < if 0 is the mSATA drive
lis par


The situation would seem to show the repair operation on the laptop, since they did not have the mSATA, would have set up the larger drive as the boot device and put the EFI partition there. Probably why you show a Windows Boot Manager, and a BCDEDIT /enum all in the command prompt window might confirm that. But if the mSATA was bootable, you may be able to place it first in the boot order, or boot device menu and get it to boot as legacy as long as Legacy is allowed in the bios.

I have no installed on an mSATA device, but I might think the fact it is a PCI device could make a difference on how it is handled. The tutorial shows a Legacy install, and in newer bioses, there may be an option to boot to UEFI or Legacy or both for PCI devices. I do not know this would actually be involved, since normally it is for OpRom equipped type devices. I suppose since this is a laptop, the mSATA is installed on a special motherboard slot? If you want to do an independent UEFI install on it, you may have to remove the larger drive. It is hard to create a second EFI partition if one is already present.

 

[Samhayne]

Hi again Saltgrass,

Your help is much appreciated.
Though I've already decided to just do a reinstall.

The mSata drive definitely lacks an EFI partition... even the main
partition is in MBR and not in GPT format.

As you already pointed out... it's not really possible to "fix" this
by converting the partition and adding an EFI partition.

Yes, I could set the Boot setup to legacy mode ... but I really
don't want to. (When trying, the SSD still didn't show up anyway)


My mistake may have been to keep the HDD installed when
installing Win8 to the SSD. Probably some boot stuff ended
up on the HDD as you already pointed out.

 

[Samhayne]

Okay... reinstalling Windows 8 did the trick.
The drive now shows up in the BIOS.

(I will edit the first posting now if I still can)

I also uninstalled the HDD this time before installing Win8
to the SDD.

I only wonder now if I can get a real dual boot system
by just doing some BCD editing with both drives having
their own EFI partition now.