Dell Precision M6700 Owners Thread

Hey all, I am having an issue with booting into UEFI mode from my mSATA (or any drive for that matter).

I bought an mSATA, installed it and duped my C drive so I could boot from that to use as my Win 10 drive.
I go to the BIOS and try t boot from it using Legacy mode and I got a non-system disk error. I thought it might be because I was in RAID mode so I switched the laptop to AHCI. Still won;t boot from the mSATA. I tried switching it to UEFI mode to see if that allowed me to boot from mSATA but when I do all of the drives disappear and there is no way to select one... Does the 6700 support UEFI? Any idea why I can;t choose a drive when clicking UEFI?

Screen shots attached.

Thanks all,
Mike

 

M6700 supports UEFI (using it here). Your Windows install must have been set up using UEFI originally for this to work. You can't switch between legacy and UEFI on the fly. Disks won't show up as choices in the BIOS unless they have a UEFI boot loader installed, and you have to use the "Add boot option" button (or press F12 at boot to get the list of available boot options).

(You can switch from legacy to UEFI by converting your disk to the GPT partition layout format using a tool like gdisk, manually creating the UEFI boot partition, and then installing the UEFI version of the Windows boot loader --- more work than most people probably want to deal with.)

 

Ugh, OK, thanks for the info.

If I reformat the C drive using the standard DELL Win 7 installer that came with the laptop will it give me the option to format it GPT?

 

If you want to use UEFI, you must be sure to use UEFI when booting the install media. Windows will automatically format the drive accordingly.

If you have the Win7 DVD inserted, when you press F12 to get the list of boot devices, you will notice that there is a choice for both legacy and UEFI. Which type of system you end up with depends on which method you use to boot the disc.

If you have already successfully upgraded to Windows 10 and activated, you can use Windows 10 media to reinstall and you will be able to activate again. You can get the media here.

 

Ahhhh, so basically I need to set the BIOS to UEFI, then reformat drives normally and Win will auto make them GPT, correct?
I have not installed Win 10 yet because I have been unable to boot off of the mSATA. When I installed the mSATA it I formatted it GPT so right now it is non-bootable even though it has a duplicate partition set of my C drive.

 

As long as you boot the install media using UEFI, Windows will partition the drive using GPT. (On the F12 boot menu, you will have options to boot the media using both legacy or UEFI, no matter which option you have selected in the BIOS, so you have to make sure to choose the correct one.)

The installer doesn't tell you which one it is using but you will find out soon enough if it doesn't work after the first reboot.

Alternatively, since you've already copied your C: drive to a GPT partition, you could get it booting by doing something like this.

Shrink the partition so that you have a few hundred MBs available for new partitions. Then boot a Windows 7 install DVD in UEFI mode. Get to the command prompt and open diskpart.

Issue these commands.
* list disk
* select disk x (where x is the number of the mSATA disk)
* create partition ESP size=128
* format fs=fat32 quick

If you don't already have a Microsoft Reserved Partition on this disk,
* create partition MSR size=128

Exit diskpart and get to regular command prompt. The following command will install the boot loader.
* bcdboot C:\Windows /v
(Here, "C:\Windows" is the path to the Windows install on your mSATA drive as it is seen in the install media environment, adjust the drive letter accordingly.)

If you get a success message from this last command, you should be all set to boot the system in UEFI mode.

 

I really appreciate this, but I found this info as well and it didn't work - here's why: Apparently I did NOT format my mSATA GPT, it was MBR. However, even after cloning my C drive to it two times from Acronis and then Macrium, just after I see "Loading Windows..." the computer gives me the flash of a BSOD and then reboots loading the original C drive.

I am assuming that the 6700 can boot from the mSATA?

 

Yes it can. If you are using Acronis, you should make sure that you clone your entire disk (not just the C: partition, there is also a hidden boot partition that should be copied over). If you use the "Clone disk" option from the "Tools" menu on the bootable media, it will do this automatically.

Also, disable your old C: drive in the BIOS "drives" section during the first boot of the mSATA. (Or just physically remove it.) I've seen Windows get confused over which drive to mount in situations like this before. After the first successful boot you can go back and enable your old drive.

 

Yeah, I checked both times in Disk Management from Windows and it showed the hidden partition was there and active both times.
I'll try physically unplugging the C drive from the laptop and trying again.

If it fails to boot as the the only physical drive would this mean the mSATA is damaged or could still be some reason the BOIS is not allowing it to be a boot drive?

 

Can't say... It should "just work." In my M6700 I have booted from mSATA without issue. (I have a 60GB drive that I used for testing Windows 10.) In my M4800, I cloned my install to the mSATA using Acronis and didn't have any trouble.