Acer Aspire 5739G New SSD HD Installation

Hi, I have an old Aspire 5739G which I bought new in 2010 which I'm now upgrading. I've already done the processor to a P9700 which went swimmingly and I've also got a Samsung 860 EVO SSD to replace the old Hitachi. I created a new installation of Windows 10 (I upgraded from 7 to 10 originally some years ago when Microsoft offered that option) using the Media Creation Tool on a USB stick and proceeded to boot off it with the new SSD installed. But when it came to where I wanted to install Windows it said I could find no drives and would I like to search for a Storage Driver. I wasnt sure what was happening and there were no drivers to install, so i removed the SSD and checked it on my main PC - the SSD came up fine. So whilst in the PC I took the opportunity to Initialize the drive and create a simple volume and format it, then put it back into the laptop, but the same thing happened; I reached the same installation stage where it could not find a drive. Further investigation showed the SSD does not appear in the Laptop BIOS. I flashed the BIOS when I did the CPU install (BIOS is now 1.3311), so I believe its the latest version. So i'm not sure what I can do. I can put the old Hitachi drive back in and it boots fine. The only thing that I do remember is when i Initialized the SSD on my PC, I was offered the option of a GUID/GPT or MBR partition table, and it was defaulted to GPT, which I chose, but I dont know if that has any bearing on the situation ...

Accepted answers

StevenGen

VinceTaylor said:

Hi, I have an old Aspire 5739G which I bought new in 2010 which I'm now upgrading. I've already done the processor to a P9700 which went swimmingly and I've also got a Samsung 860 EVO SSD to replace the old Hitachi. I created a new installation of Windows 10 (I upgraded from 7 to 10 originally some years ago when Microsoft offered that option) using the Media Creation Tool on a USB stick and proceeded to boot off it with the new SSD installed. But when it came to where I wanted to install Windows it said I could find no drives and would I like to search for a Storage Driver. I wasnt sure what was happening and there were no drivers to install, so i removed the SSD and checked it on my main PC - the SSD came up fine. So whilst in the PC I took the opportunity to Initialize the drive and create a simple volume and format it, then put it back into the laptop, but the same thing happened; I reached the same installation stage where it could not find a drive. Further investigation showed the SSD does not appear in the Laptop BIOS. I flashed the BIOS when I did the CPU install (BIOS is now 1.3311), so I believe its the latest version. So i'm not sure what I can do. I can put the old Hitachi drive back in and it boots fine. The only thing that I do remember is when i Initialized the SSD on my PC, I was offered the option of a GUID/GPT or MBR partition table, and it was defaulted to GPT, which I chose, but I dont know if that has any bearing on the situation ...

First, the simplest and easiest way to solve your problem but that is and if you still have Win-10 on your Hitachi drive and didn’t format it? Is to clone your Hitachi Win-10 drive, that is what Samsung suggest for a 2.5" SATA SSD with a SATA to USB 3.0 adaptor cable and use Samsung’s excellent “Data Migration” software which is so quick and easy to use to clone Win-10 to your 860 EVO SSD, also use their “Magician Software” and also implement the “TRIM” cmd in windows to further quicken and make the 860 EVO SSD adaptable to windows. I’ve done this many times on these older laptops on both MBR/Legacy and GUID/GPT BIOSs and its a very easy process to do and these Samsung 2.5" and M.2 SSD's work unbelievably quick and are very reliable, I've been using an old Samsung EVO SSD for over 4 years and its worked perfectly and without any BSOD' or crashes ever. If you want a clean install then you just use the Create Windows 10 installation media USB or OEM DVD, that you have created on and within Win 10 on your Aspire 5739G as that USB/DVD is formatted for MBR/Legacy and is best for your laptop then do an install process.

The thing that you have done wrongly is that you have formatted and installed Win-10 on the new SSD in a GUID/GPT format when your Aspire 5739G has an MBR/Legacy and the Aspire 5739G BIOS does not recognise a GUID/GPT formatted drive. Also and after you do the above you can use your old Hitachi drive as a slave drive (make sure that you format it and don't have the old Win-10 on it before you put into the caddy) by getting a DVD caddy and installing the old drive into the DVD slot. Also, make sure that you always back your system up with a good backup software like Macrium Reflect as this software is excellent for backups and if your system ever crashes. Good luck hope this helps.

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StevenGen

VinceTaylor said:

Hi, I have an old Aspire 5739G which I bought new in 2010 which I'm now upgrading. I've already done the processor to a P9700 which went swimmingly and I've also got a Samsung 860 EVO SSD to replace the old Hitachi. I created a new installation of Windows 10 (I upgraded from 7 to 10 originally some years ago when Microsoft offered that option) using the Media Creation Tool on a USB stick and proceeded to boot off it with the new SSD installed. But when it came to where I wanted to install Windows it said I could find no drives and would I like to search for a Storage Driver. I wasnt sure what was happening and there were no drivers to install, so i removed the SSD and checked it on my main PC - the SSD came up fine. So whilst in the PC I took the opportunity to Initialize the drive and create a simple volume and format it, then put it back into the laptop, but the same thing happened; I reached the same installation stage where it could not find a drive. Further investigation showed the SSD does not appear in the Laptop BIOS. I flashed the BIOS when I did the CPU install (BIOS is now 1.3311), so I believe its the latest version. So i'm not sure what I can do. I can put the old Hitachi drive back in and it boots fine. The only thing that I do remember is when i Initialized the SSD on my PC, I was offered the option of a GUID/GPT or MBR partition table, and it was defaulted to GPT, which I chose, but I dont know if that has any bearing on the situation ...

First, the simplest and easiest way to solve your problem but that is and if you still have Win-10 on your Hitachi drive and didn’t format it? Is to clone your Hitachi Win-10 drive, that is what Samsung suggest for a 2.5" SATA SSD with a SATA to USB 3.0 adaptor cable and use Samsung’s excellent “Data Migration” software which is so quick and easy to use to clone Win-10 to your 860 EVO SSD, also use their “Magician Software” and also implement the “TRIM” cmd in windows to further quicken and make the 860 EVO SSD adaptable to windows. I’ve done this many times on these older laptops on both MBR/Legacy and GUID/GPT BIOSs and its a very easy process to do and these Samsung 2.5" and M.2 SSD's work unbelievably quick and are very reliable, I've been using an old Samsung EVO SSD for over 4 years and its worked perfectly and without any BSOD' or crashes ever. If you want a clean install then you just use the Create Windows 10 installation media USB or OEM DVD, that you have created on and within Win 10 on your Aspire 5739G as that USB/DVD is formatted for MBR/Legacy and is best for your laptop then do an install process.

The thing that you have done wrongly is that you have formatted and installed Win-10 on the new SSD in a GUID/GPT format when your Aspire 5739G has an MBR/Legacy and the Aspire 5739G BIOS does not recognise a GUID/GPT formatted drive. Also and after you do the above you can use your old Hitachi drive as a slave drive (make sure that you format it and don't have the old Win-10 on it before you put into the caddy) by getting a DVD caddy and installing the old drive into the DVD slot. Also, make sure that you always back your system up with a good backup software like Macrium Reflect as this software is excellent for backups and if your system ever crashes. Good luck hope this helps.

VinceTaylor

Thanks for you input, in the end I put the SSD back in my main PC and used DISKPART in the Command Window to convert the drive to MBR. Once I placed it back in the laptop, the BIOS saw the drive OK, and everything was fine after that.

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