Internal hard disk drive not found when switching to Samsung evo 850 SSD

MadMrMeeseeks

Commendable
Sep 22, 2016
7
0
1,510
Hey guys,

I have found some similar threads on this but nothing that has solved my problem. I am working on an alienware x51 r3 with an intel core i5-6400 and 1tb HDD

Anyway, I ran into some issues with the HDD whirling up to 100% and was thinking about getting a SSD so this was the time. I purchased a Samsung 850 EVO.

I cloned the HDD and then shut everything down and swapped it out with the SSD. When I boot everything up, I get the error INTERNAL HARD DISK DRIVE NOT FOUND. It suggests reseating (which I have done many times)

When I go into the BIOS settings, the drive is visible there. It is also visible in the disk management tool on windows 10.

I updated the BIOS to the latest firmware with no luck. At this point I am not really sure what else to try.

It has been about 10 years since I have had a PC, so I apologize if I am missing something obvious. If anyone has some other ideas, I really would appreciate the help!

Thanks!
 
Solution
You need to start up with the Windows installer disk attached and allow it to do a repair to the SRP (system reserved partition) so that Windows expects that disk as the boot device.

MadMrMeeseeks

Commendable
Sep 22, 2016
7
0
1,510


Thanks for the advice. Ill have to order some cables in order to try that, but that definitely makes sense.

Interestingly enough, I noticed that the SATA cable was plugged into the SATA 2 slot on the mother board. I attached this to the SATA 1 and it booted up off of the SSD.

I may need to move this to another thread, but when I was tinkering around in the BIOS, I changed something from UEFI to Legacy. Now when I start the computer, I cannot get back into the BIOS. I even tried using the restart method to boot into UEFI.