won't boot after adding m.2

[Pachuca]

I have a MSI X99A GODLIKE Gaming mobo. I recently purchased an m.2 SSD to upgrade from my current 850 evo. I was going to clone the drive, but to my surprise after adding the m.2 SSD my mobo doesn't want to boot. I looked into BIOS boot options and for some reason the drives were switched around. It was trying to boot from one of the other SSDs I use for storage. So I changed the BIOS to boot from the SSD that has my OS on it, than I rebooted again nothing happened. I just get a black screen with no message and a blinking prompt that looks like this _ so I rebooted again. This time I removed the m.2 and the system was able to boot into windows 10. I tried adding the m.2 again and this time when I went to check the bios i noticed that all my drives except one had a ? symbol there as if the BIOS didn't recognize any of them or something. Still I saw my drive with the OS was there as an option, but it still doesn't boot up and just loads the black screen. Sometimes I get a message saying that some changes were made and please go back to setup to select boot options... or something like that. It seems like no matter what I do, the m.2 drive just won't allow my system to boot and I am unable to clone my other SSD onto it. Also, the mobo doesn't support 2 sata connections when m.2 is installed and I made sure that those sata ports were not in use. Nothing seems to be working here... do I have a defective mobo or something?  Thank you for any help in advance. 

[GalacticRuler]

Can you try unplugging all other drives and just have the M.2?

[Pachuca]

6 minutes ago, GalacticRuler said:

Can you try unplugging all other drives and just have the M.2?

There's no OS on the m.2. What would this accomplish? 

[Streetguru]

10 minutes ago, Pachuca said:

 

did you try just unplugging all the drives and just install onto the M.2?

[Pachuca]

Just now, Streetguru said:

did you try just unplugging all the drives and just install onto the M.2?

no, i only have one license for the OS and it's already used on my other SSD. I was planning to clone the SSD onto the m.2 than use the ssd for more storage or as a backup. Problem is I can't boot into the system to start the cloning process. 

[Streetguru]

3 minutes ago, Pachuca said:

no, i only have one license for the OS and it's already used on my other SSD. I was planning to clone the SSD onto the m.2 than use the ssd for more storage or as a backup. Problem is I can't boot into the system to start the cloning process. 

You can just install windows 10 without a key, and activate it later with your old key potentially, Also when you reinstall windows 10 now if you don't change your motherboard it should auto activate

 

or run a live GNU/Linux USB and use disk cloning software there
http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/19141/clone-a-hard-drive-using-an-ubuntu-live-cd/


You could also use a live Gparted USB, about the same as using live ubuntu or something though
https://www.tigraine.at/2014/01/04/how-to-upgrade-to-an-ssd-with-minimal-effort

[Pachuca]

1 minute ago, Streetguru said:

You can just install windows 10 without a key, and activate it later with your old key potentially, Also when you reinstall windows 10 now if you don't change your motherboard it should auto activate

 

or run a live GNU/Linux USB and use disk cloning software there
http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/19141/clone-a-hard-drive-using-an-ubuntu-live-cd/


You could also use a live Gparted USB, about the same as using live ubuntu or something though
https://www.tigraine.at/2014/01/04/how-to-upgrade-to-an-ssd-with-minimal-effort

But I don't want to lose my data that's on my SSD now. I mean I don't want to just have a new OS installed, I need everything that's on there.

[Streetguru]

Just now, Pachuca said:

But I don't want to lose my data that's on my SSD now. I mean I don't want to just have a new OS installed, I need everything that's on there.

So just clone it under a live GNU/Linux USB

[Pachuca]

1 minute ago, Streetguru said:

So just clone it under a live GNU/Linux USB

Never did anything like that before, wouldn't know where to start.