Plz Halp... Mobo only boots from one specific SSD

[DepressoExpresso00]

Alrighty you smarty bunch, here's a test for ya

I've been building computers since I was a young kid, 20 years later I'm building budget systems as a low profit hobby and find myself stuck. I've built roughly 8 rigs in the past 4ish months but this 1st gen Core i7 super budget setup is racking my brain like no other. 

Based on an old Veriton M490G mainboard, I slapped an 860 and some ram into 'er and planned to find a low cost GPU to pair with it for a super entry level e-sports/ kids gaming machine (since picked up an RX560 4gb from a bulk buy, score :D)

THE PROBLEM: My testing SSD is my og Samsung 860 EVO 500GB and it boots no issues, runs cinebench and all perfectly fine...

I have tried this F- gosh darn thing with 3 other SSD's (including 2 250gb 860 Evo's) and 3 or 4 HDD's, some with fresh Windows 10 installs, some not fresh, one with Vista... NOTHING. Will not find bootable media AT ALL, unless it's my trusty test 860. 

I've tried updating the bios, it was .10 off being the latest already, this helped squat. 

Anyone got any quick tips before I do the thing I'm really trying to avoid and throw out otherwise perfectly functioning hardware?

Cheers in advance,

James

[ip6o]

Let's get a detail out of the way: do all SSDs have the same MBR partitioning scheme? Or could it be possible that some have MBR and the others GPT?

[mariushm]

Some M.2 connectors only support SATA SSDs (AHCI), not NVME M.2 drives.

 

Also maybe you have to go in BIOS and in boot order, to ADD your new SSD to the boot order.  It may be hardcoded to only boot from your original SSD, then fall back to network or optical drives / usb sticks.

 

First diagnostic step is to go in bios and double check that the new SSD is detected. If it's detected, make sure it's in the boot order.

 

Then it may still not work if the SSD doesn't have a bootable partition. Make sure there's a bootable partition on the SSD and an operating system there.

 

If it doesn't boot from replacement SSD, try to boot from a USB stick with Windows and see if the Windows install detects the SSD.

 

[DepressoExpresso00]

I'll have to double check whether or not they're being picked up in the bios under boot options, but from memory they don't. I've tried a USB with the media tool but even that doesn't get detected in the bios (DEL on POST screen), it does in boot order tho (F12 on POST screen)???

None of the drives are M.2 or NVME, the board doesn't have M.2 slots

Appreciate the fast response, thank you

[DepressoExpresso00]

On 5/18/2025 at 10:29 PM, ip6o said:

Let's get a detail out of the way: do all SSDs have the same MBR partitioning scheme? Or could it be possible that some have MBR and the others GPT?

You sir, are a gosh darn legend. The amount of effort to change to MBR was a rigmarole and a half but it worked. I thank thee