Predator G3-605 replace legacy mSata SSD with larger SSD with different form factor

Hi. Our Predator G3-605 still going strong. It came with a 128 GB SSD as its C-Drive; this is a "LiteOn" mSata SSD mounted directly to the motherboard.

I want to replace this with a bigger one. I have been trying to upgrade using a larger SSD which came from another project - a 2.5inch Sata form factor of 500 GB.

I was able to clone the original drive, and get the machine to recognise the new SSD drive as "Drive D". But despite what I did in BIOS or Windows Partition Manager I could not get the new SSD to be seen as the boot disk. I tried removing the original SSD, but it did not like that at all.

Is it straightforward to make such an SSD (2.5inch Sata form factor) to act as boot drive? If not line of least resistance would be to buy a new mSata disk.

All wisdom gratefully received. Thanks.

Accepted answers

JackE

>>>I tried removing the original SSD, but it did not like that at all.>>>

Try removing it again

(1) Then turn the machine on and immediately tap F2 to enter the BIOS menu again. Make sure the 2.5" SSD is recognized in the Information tab. Also note whether it's labelled HDD0 or HDD1.

(2) Make sure secure boot is enabled in the BOOT tab.

(3) Then go to the Security tab. Then erase all secure boot settings options. Then select UEFI trusted file option.

(4) Then select HDD0 or HDD1 whichever you current BIOS information tab assigned the 2.5" SSD

(5) Select EFI folder

(6) Select Boot subfolder

(7) Select BOOTX64.EFI as trusted UEFI file

(8) Press F10 to save settings and exit.

If it boots OK, then you can put the mSATA back in. The mSATA SSD should then should show up as D : \

Daksol

Jack - thanks for this info, I will try this out.

One small followup. You state that I will need to remove the mSata again. Is there a way of de-activating the mSata in BIOS etc? (I presume not as you would probably have mentioned it).

JackE

There are 2 problems leaving it in.

(1) High risk of corrupting it and making it unbootable if something goes wrong trying to make the bigger drive bootable

(2) UEFI file selection in BIOS security will be complicated by two sets hidden EFI partitions instead of one

StevenGen

Daksol said:

Jack - strange but true experience second time

I repeated the disk clone as before, and removed the mSata SSD.
Fitted the new SSD and restarted, expecting to get the heavy BIOS errors I had the previous time.
But instead it recognised the new SSD as the new C Drive and started up perfectly.
So did not need to use your instructions wrt UEFI & co,

Must have been something different I did this time.

Anyway - always nice to get a good outcome.

Best regards

Just as an addition to cloning a drive, you never have both old and new cloned boot drives in your desktop/laptop after a clone and then boot the system, you boot your system only with the new cloned drive and always remove the old boot drive, as the OS always boots from the old boot drive. That is probably where you went wrong as and if you would have removed the old boot drive then your new drive would have been recognized as C;\ and not

\.

All comments

JackE

>>>I tried removing the original SSD, but it did not like that at all.>>>

Try removing it again

(1) Then turn the machine on and immediately tap F2 to enter the BIOS menu again. Make sure the 2.5" SSD is recognized in the Information tab. Also note whether it's labelled HDD0 or HDD1.

(2) Make sure secure boot is enabled in the BOOT tab.

(3) Then go to the Security tab. Then erase all secure boot settings options. Then select UEFI trusted file option.

(4) Then select HDD0 or HDD1 whichever you current BIOS information tab assigned the 2.5" SSD

(5) Select EFI folder

(6) Select Boot subfolder

(7) Select BOOTX64.EFI as trusted UEFI file

(8) Press F10 to save settings and exit.

If it boots OK, then you can put the mSATA back in. The mSATA SSD should then should show up as D : \

Daksol

Jack - thanks for this info, I will try this out.

One small followup. You state that I will need to remove the mSata again. Is there a way of de-activating the mSata in BIOS etc? (I presume not as you would probably have mentioned it).

JackE

There are 2 problems leaving it in.

(1) High risk of corrupting it and making it unbootable if something goes wrong trying to make the bigger drive bootable

(2) UEFI file selection in BIOS security will be complicated by two sets hidden EFI partitions instead of one

Daksol

Jack - strange but true experience second time

I repeated the disk clone as before, and removed the mSata SSD.
Fitted the new SSD and restarted, expecting to get the heavy BIOS errors I had the previous time.
But instead it recognised the new SSD as the new C Drive and started up perfectly.
So did not need to use your instructions wrt UEFI & co,

Must have been something different I did this time.

Anyway - always nice to get a good outcome.

Best regards

StevenGen

Daksol said:

Jack - strange but true experience second time

I repeated the disk clone as before, and removed the mSata SSD.
Fitted the new SSD and restarted, expecting to get the heavy BIOS errors I had the previous time.
But instead it recognised the new SSD as the new C Drive and started up perfectly.
So did not need to use your instructions wrt UEFI & co,

Must have been something different I did this time.

Anyway - always nice to get a good outcome.

Best regards

Just as an addition to cloning a drive, you never have both old and new cloned boot drives in your desktop/laptop after a clone and then boot the system, you boot your system only with the new cloned drive and always remove the old boot drive, as the OS always boots from the old boot drive. That is probably where you went wrong as and if you would have removed the old boot drive then your new drive would have been recognized as C;\ and not

\.

JackE

Congrats on your success. Thanks for reporting back!

billsey

You can also run into it if the two drives aren't the same size, and the cloning software decides to resize all partition proportionally instead of leaving all except the system partition the same size...

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