Adding an old HDD to Nitro AN515-44 as a Storage expansion. Nitro does not boot from the main SSD.

EmeraldWiz

Hello Acer Community,

I have 2 Acer laptops. An Acer E5-476G and a new Nitro AN515-44. Because of the very small storage of Nitro and since all my files are on my old laptop I decided to transfer the HDD from E5-476G to Nitro as an expansion for Storage. When I boot, it appears that it boots from the HDD instead of the main SSD. Why?... The HDD is partitioned in half, so I decided to wipe out Windows entirely on the existing partition where Windows is installed. From an unallocated partition, I made it to a new partition entirely fresh. So when I placed it back again on the Nitro, it still would not boot from the main SSD, but instead, it recognizes an error since Windows has been wiped out already. I went to BIOS and found out that Nitro only supports EUFI and legacy no longer exists. And in the boot menu in BIOS, there is no option except, "Windows BOOT Manager". Why is this so difficult. I simply want my old hard drive as storage. Please help. Gurus, Experts or anyone would be much appreciated.

AnhEZ28

@EmeraldWiz did you try to clear out every partition in that HDD?

EmeraldWiz

AnhEZ28 said:

@EmeraldWiz did you try to clear out every partition in that HDD?

No, because I have no other storage to transfer the other half of the partition where my files are saved. I did wipe out the partition where windows is installed. What I don't understand is why it would boot from that HDD where no windows is installed, instead of booting directly from my main SSD from Nitro itself.

StevenGen

EmeraldWiz said:

AnhEZ28 said:

@EmeraldWiz did you try to clear out every partition in that HDD?

No, because I have no other storage to transfer the other half of the partition where my files are saved. I did wipe out the partition where windows is installed. What I don't understand is why it would boot from that HDD where no windows is installed, instead of booting directly from my main SSD from Nitro itself.

First, is the old HDD formatted in GUID (GPT) format as it seem that it is? If it’s in GUID (GPT) then it must still have the “healthy (boot, page file, crash dump, basic data partition) on it from your old Windows OS that the boot order goes to, you can’t have two boot drives installed with the boot, page file, crash dump, basic data partition as this will happen. In your case (so that you don’t lose damage any of your personal files from the old HDD) its best to copy all your personal files to another drive and boot your laptop with its M.2 boot drive then add the old HDD and format it to the options and conditions I’m suggesting below.

As and note this, an MBR partition of this added old HDD is the simplest and usual format for a simple slave drive or and if this drive is more than 2TB you need to do a GUID (GPT) partition to take advantage of its full capacity beyond 2TB. That is where your problem is.

ttttt

@EmeraldWiz

Generally agree with @StevenGen.

If I were you, I'll get an external USB adapter for the old HDD (probably as low as USD $10). Boot to the new drive and then insert the old drive with the adapter to see if the new drive can see the old one and access the data inside.

For your case, it seemed that something is not cleaned up in the UEFI file. This maybe something similar to my case a year or so ago. My case was a Linux OS, and yours is an old Windows OS no longer exist.

Check out ths link and see if you can find something useful:

https://community.acer.com/en/discussion/608362/how-to-delete-unwanted-os-from-uefi-bios#latest