I built a new PC, but the SSD doesn't appear as a boot option in the BIOS. I connected the drive to my old computer and Disk Management showed that it had no partitions. I tried creating an EFI partition and a new volume manually, but I'm not sure whether that was necessary. The SSD is a 500 GB MSI drive, and I need to make it bootable. What is the correct way to set it up?
2 Answers
You generally don't need to create the EFI partition manually. In Windows Setup, select the SSD, delete the partitions you created so the drive shows as unallocated space, then select that unallocated space and click Install. Windows will automatically create the EFI, Microsoft Reserved, recovery, and main system partitions. If the SSD still isn't detected by the installer, then troubleshoot the drive connection, storage settings, or hardware separately.
An empty SSD won't be bootable until an operating system is installed. Create a bootable Windows USB using Microsoft's Media Creation Tool, start the new PC from that USB in UEFI mode, and run Windows Setup. The installer can prepare the drive for you.
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