Problem getting mSATA to be recognized as boot drive

[richardr]

The C: drive for my computer died, so I decided to replace it with a mSATA drive. I've installed Windows 10 64-bit, Enterprise on the mSATA drive.  The installation went normal.  But, when I booted the computer, the system is not finding the mSATA drive resulting in the error message about no drive with OS found.

If however, when booting, I hit F12 and go into the BIOS' boot manager, the drive is listed.  I can select the mSATA drive and Windows will boot just fine. 

I went into the BIOS to make sure that the mSATA drive was selected in the boot order settings.  The mSATA is not listed as any of the drives that I can select!?!.  Just my DVD and other hard drives were listed.

Future research showed that if the mSATA is the only device in the computer, then it is listed in the boot options and the computer will boot from the mSATA.  If I only have the SATA DVD drive attached, then both the mSATA and the DVD drives are listed, and the system will still boot successfully.  But, if I have my hard drives (which are configured as a mirrored (RAID1) array), then the mSATA will not be listed in the boot options at all.  But, as I said above, I go to the boot selection option (F12 at boot time), and the mSATA will be listed and I can still boot successfully.

Does anyone have any thoughts as to what the solution is?  The motherboard is obviously seeing the mSATA drive, it's just not letting me (for some strange reason) select the drive as the boot device when I also have the hard drives attached.

The motherboard is a Gigabyte GA-Z77-DS3H.  The latest BIOS, F11a, is installed.  In case it matters,  the "Boot Mode Selection" option is currently configured for "UEFI and Legacy".  And as I have RAID configured, the "SATA Mode Selection" is set to "RAID".

[dmdilks]

Because when you set it up you set the msata drive as AHCI didn't you. It will not work with raid. You have to change the Msata too raid for it to work. You have to use that controller for it to work with the raid setup.

AHCi & Raid are basically the same controller but you can't run them together sorry. You will have to start over with that controller. That is reinstall windows using the raid controller.

[Klinger]

I have the same problem....

[richardr]

dmdilks,

Thanks for replying.

As I mentioned in my original post, my C: drive died so I'm trying to replace that SSD that died with the mSATA card.  So I still have the data drives installed, and still configured as mirrored drives.  So in response to your reply, the "SATA Mode Selection" in the BIOS was already set to "RAID" when I installed the mSATA card and installed Windows 10 on it.

I'm not sure what you are referring to when you said I need to "reinstall Windows using the raid controller."  Isn't that is in effect what I have done?

Richard

[Ruby Gilbert]

I experienced the same problem, but I still couldn't find a solution.

[shadowsports]

I experienced the same problem, but I still couldn't find a solution.

Greetings,
Since this is a 5 yr old thread, shall we assume you have a Z77 based board and are trying to boot to mSATA with other disks in RAID?

Unless you have identical hardware and the exact same scenario, please start a new thread.  It should include your specific MB model, OS, BIOS configuration, installed hardware and how it is connected, etc.

Thanks