ASRock H97M Pro4 does not show SSD in Boot Menu

[Pewit]

Issue: I have an SSD installed which to I have moved the O/S Partition using the utility S/W which came with it, but the SSD does not show up in the Boot Options.

The SSD shows up in Windows and in the Hard Drive BBS Priorities, but it doesn't show up in the Boot Option Priorities

Configuration
Windows 7 Pro SP1 64-bit
SATA mode = AHCI
BIOS Version: P1.20
BIOS Release Date: 07/28/14

Solutions tried:
Initially the SDD volume wasn't mounted as I obtained an error in windows - drive was "offline" due to a "Disk Signature collision".
I changed the drive signature using diskpart, mounted the volume and it now shows up in Explorer but still not in Boot menu
I have reset the BIOS

H/W

Mobo	ASRock H97M-PRO4 (BIOS 306C3/9 latest)
CPU	Intel Core i7 4790
RAM	G.Skill Ripjaws-X 16G Kit(8Gx2) DDR3 1600 (installed slot A1 and B1)
SSD	Transcend SSD370 256GB
HDD	Western Digital WD Green 3TB
GPU	(Intel HD 4600)
Case	Coolermaster Silencio 352
PSU	Corsair CS450M
ODD	ASUS DRW-24D3ST Black 24x DVD-RW Writer (OEM)
CPU HSE	Coolermaster HyperX TX3 EVO Universal CPU Cooler

Regards

Paul

[parsec]

Re: ASRock H97M Pro4 does not show SSD in Boot Menu

You used the software Transcend provides to clone your OS from another drive to the new SSD, correct? You said you just "moved the O/S Partition", which if accurate, is not enough to make the SSD bootable, it must have a MBR partition, the actual boot partition.

When the SSD is listed in the HDD BBS Priorities, did you move it to the top of that list, in the first BBS Priority list? Then check the Boot Options list.

You may be having a problem with a missing boot partition, the MBR. That could be caused by what I said above, or depending upon how you installed Windows on the drive you used to clone to the SSD. It seems you can still boot from your HDD and check the SSD in Windows, did you check the SSD in Disk Management to see if it has a boot partition? It should have the basic partitions identical to the drive you cloned from.

The Disk Signature collision problem might have been caused by the cloning software, that should not happen. That just makes me wonder about how good that software is, unless it was not used correctly.

[Pewit]

Re: ASRock H97M Pro4 does not show SSD in Boot Menu

I have tried disconnecting the WD HDD and connected the SDD to SATA Port 0 (it was connected to port 1) and it now shows up in the boot menu and it boots into Windows from the installation on that drive which I copied from the Windows install on the HDD using the utility came with the SSD.

I left the SSD connected to Poort 0 and reconnected the WD HDD to SATA Port 1 However, now the WD HDD doesn't show up in the Boot Option Priorities although it does show in Hard Drive BBS Priorities.

Thus I believe the SATA cable is not faulty.

The other strange difference is that the mouse is no longer supported in UEFI when booting from the SSD.

[Pewit]

Re: ASRock H97M Pro4 does not show SSD in Boot Menu

You used the software Transcend provides to clone your OS from another drive to the new SSD, correct? You said you just "moved the O/S Partition", which if accurate, is not enough to make the SSD bootable, it must have a MBR partition, the actual boot partition.

You are correct it is a cloning utility and it does include the boot partition otherwise it would not boot (see post above)

When the SSD is listed in the HDD BBS Priorities, did you move it to the top of that list, in the first BBS Priority list? Then check the Boot Options list.

No I didn't try that. But after I swapped the SATA ports around putting the SSD on Port 0 it does show up in the BBS Priority list

You may be having a problem with a missing boot partition, the MBR. That could be caused by what I said above, or depending upon how you installed Windows on the drive you used to clone to the SSD. It seems you can still boot from your HDD and check the SSD in Windows, did you check the SSD in Disk Management to see if it has a boot partition? It should have the basic partitions identical to the drive you cloned from.

Both the SSD and HDD are now bootable - but now that I have swapped them over it boots from the SSD which is the result I wanted. The HDD shows up in the Disk Manager and Explorer.

The Disk Signature collision problem might have been caused by the cloning software, that should not happen. That just makes me wonder about how good that software is, unless it was not used correctly.

It was used correctly and it only has the option to select the destination drive and two other options (See page 17 of the manual here)
- Select only the OS partition for cloning (which I did).
- Extended Disk

Disk Clone SW Features ‧
- Supports operating system-level backup.
‧Disk to Disk clone.*
‧Supports OS partition cloning only. **
‧Retains original drive partition structure and size when cloning to new drive.
‧Extend Disk option to extend partition size when cloning to new drive.
‧Backup and restore system in a single process.
‧Supports USB external drives.
‧Supports MBR (Master Boot Record) and GPT (GUID Partition Table)

Now it may have also copied the Disk ID at the same time which caused the ID problem - but that shouldn't affect the MB being able to see both disks it after I changed the ID.