Transfer SSD to Acer Aspire TC-780A (ATC-780A-UR12)

Hello, new to the forum! I took delivery of a new Acer Aspire TC-780A (ATC-780A-UR12) today. Since this computer only has two SATA ports consumed by 1TB HDD and DVD, I disconnected both drives, and attempted to install a Samsung EVO SSD with Windows 10 on it from another machine. However the Acer will not boot with this SSD. I looked through the BIOS menu and see that it is recognized, and the 1st boot order is set to "Hard Drive." I don't recall the exact error, but it was something to the effect of "No bootable device." The Windows 10 SSD was already set to AHCI mode, so I do not think that's the problem. Any ideas?

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brummyfan2

Hi,

You could try installing the original HDD, backup the full image of the HDD using Macrium reflect to an external HDD, create a recovery disk, again with Macrium reflect, install the SSD after removing the HDD, insert the recovery USB/DVD, change the boot order to make USB/DVD as your first boot device, recover the image on to the SSD from your backup. I found this method quick and trouble free.

http://reflect.macrium.com//help/v5/How_to/Rescue/Create_a_Standard_Windows_PE_Rescue_Environment.htm

http://kb.macrium.com/KnowledgebaseArticle50074.aspx

http://kb.macrium.com/knowledgebasearticle50079.aspx

DishoomX2

The point of moving the SSD to the Acer computer was so that I wouldn't have to start clean. I want to keep the Windows 10 installation, as well as the software and files (docs, pics, etc) that I have on the SSD. Why would this not just be plug and play? I was able to take the same SSD and plug it into a 3rd computer that I have with no problem. What is it about the Acer that is preventing me to plug in the SSD and have everything working?

brummyfan2

Hi,

Could you please tell me whether the Windows 10 installation on the SSD a retail or a OEM version.

DishoomX2

The SSD has a retail version of Windows 10 64bit Professional. It's been used in my other PC for over a year now -- it's an AMD-based computer that I built many years ago and upgraded various components over the years. Now, I want to move to an Intel-based platform because of recent instabilities (either because of the RAM+CPU+MB combo). Since I didn't want to bother with another build, and the Acer was priced well, I thought I could just move my SSD to it without issue.

brummyfan2

Hi,

I have no idea why it's not booting as you have a retail version in the SSD, could be the change in MB, please wait for someone more experienced to chime in.

DishoomX2

I swapped the SSD to another computer -- an old Dell Inspiron 530 w/ Intel Core2 quad -- and replying to this thread from it. I did not even need to go into the Dell's BIOS and it booted up just fine. So essentially the SSD with retail Windows 10 install works on the AMD computer and this Dell, but not the new Acer computer for some reason.

Does the Acer BIOS lock the boot device based on serial # or something? If so, what would happen if the HDD that it came with ever crashed and needed to be changed?

Still a mystery as to why it won't boot with the SSD. I may have to try another HDD with an OS installed to see if it has a problem with *any* disk other than what it came with.

Joseph0900

You will need the ACER motherboard drivers for the new Win10.

Here is what I did which was much easier. Un-hook DVD, added new SSD drive (Intel SSD). Boot up normal OS Win10 disk, download and ran Intel transfer utility. It copies the OS to the SSD ( boot up from SSD and it does the copying ).

After the copy is done, power down. Disconnect old 1TB os disk, leave SSD connect, connect back the DVD and you are done.

I bought a IOCrest SI-PEX40064 PCI-Express with 4 SATA connections. I have the SSD disk and two 4TB Hitachi disks. One for HOME data, second for BACKUPs. I use Win10 FileHistory and backup and it automatically backups everything to the BACKUP 4TB disk.

The ssd takes very little energy so the 300watts power supply is sufficing for the ssd plus the two 4TB disks.

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