Installing mSATA SSD as secondary drive in Lenovo A730

Hi:
I purchased a new Lenovo A730 desktop all in one pc this week.  As everyone knows, it only comes with a 5400 rpm HDD. That of course is really slow, which I anticipated. Fortunately, it comes with an empty mSATA slot. Therefore, following the advice of others with this otherwise wonderful machine, I purchased a 128 GB SSD drive to install into the mSATA slot. Done.
Using Macrium Reflect Disk Imaging, I cloned the hard drive onto the SSD drive.
Done.
I changed the boot order.
To test that I could actually boot from the SSD drive, I unplugged the hard drive, it booted from the SSD Drive. Phew.
I plugged back in the hard drive. Rebooted. It booted from the SSD drive, so far so good, I go to partitions to then attempt to delete the hard drive. The hard drive does not show up.
It does show up in the BIOS. However, it does not show up under disk management. Nor does it show up under Macrium Reflect Disk.
However, interestingly, if I revert the boot order so that the Hard Drive boots first, then of course it boots from the hard drive and everything shows up again. If I change the boot order so that it boots from the SSD drive, no more hard drive.
I really would like to boot from the SSD Drive, delete the hard drive, and use it as storage, but I cannot seem to cure this problem.
If anyone has a solution, I would really appreciate it.
Thank you.
dbw
Solved!
Go to Solution.

hi dbw,
Booting from mSATA SSD, can you try to use the diskpart utility or EaseUS Partition Master to view the connected drives.
DiskPart Command-Line Options
Diskpart Command-Line Utility
If same problem, consider using Paragon Backup & Recovery 12 Home free trial (complere guide here) to migrate the OS, drivers, etc from the HDD to the mSATA SSD. When done, set the following in the BIOS and configure it to boot from the mSATA SSD and observe.
Security Tab
Secure Boot = Disabled (if applicable)
CSM = Enabled (if applicable)
Exit Tab:
OS Optimized Defaults = Other OS / Disabled (if applicable)
Regards
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    Did someone help you today? Press the star on the left to thank them with a Kudo!
    If you find a post helpful and it answers your question, please mark it as an "Accepted Solution"! This will help the rest of the Community with similar issues identify the verified solution and benefit from it.
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    TRIM Part 2
    Trim on SSD Drives
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    Trimming SSD Performance Degradation
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    TRIM occurs when the ssd clears blocks of invalid data.  When you delete a file, the operating system will only mark the area of the file as free in order to trick the system into believing the space is available. Invalid data is still present in that location.  Its like ripping out a Table of Contents from a book.  Without this, one would not know what, if anything, is contained on the following pages.  TRIM follows the process of marking the area as free by clearing the invalid data from the drive.  Without this, the process of reading, identifying invalid data, deleting or moving and clearing the block before writing can actually result in performance 4 times slower than it would have normally been as a new drive.
    In recently speaking with Kent Smith, Sr. Director of Product Marketing  for SandForce, he identified that there are many variables outside of the hardware that are responsible for users not seeing the benefits of TRIM, the first of which are drivers at the OS level which have to be working optimally in order for TRIM to function correctly.  Another example occurred with early Windows 7 users testing their newly installed drives and not seeing the benefits of TRIM.  Examination of these complaints revealed that users would have originally made the Windows 7 installation on hardware that did not support TRIM and then cloned to the SSD to which TRIM was supported but would not work because of the original configuration settings.  The same could be said of cloning an OS that originally had AHCI turned off followed by a clone to the SSD where TRIM was not being passed, simply because AHCI has to activated for TRIM to function.
    ENHANCE SSD OVER PROVISIONING MANUALLY
    In our conversation, we breached the topic of SSD capacity to Mr Smith to which he replied, “Are you trying to optimize performance or maximize capacity?” which reminded us that the main purpose of the consumers transition to SSD was to maximize their system performance.  Filling a drive to capacity will hinder TRIM and GC ability which will result in performance degradation. Many drives will start to display performance changes once filled to 70% capacity.  Testing has shown that the user can very simply add to the drive, especially if it is a 7% over provisioned drive, by reducing the size of the partition, the new unallocated space of which will automatically be picked up as over provisioning and benefit the SSD in many ways.  This idea has been tackled by Fusion IO who includes a utility within their products that allows the user complete control of the size of their over provisioning.
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    Over provisioning allows more data to be moved at one time which, not only enhances GC,  but also reduces write amplification to the drive.  Write amplification is a bit tricky of an explanation but it is the measure of how many bytes are actually written when requiring storage of a certain number of bytes.  A ratio of 1:1 would be ideal but not a reality and a typical result would be an actual size of 40kb written for a typical 4kb file.  In short, maximizing over provisioning and reducing write amplification increases the performance and lifespan of the drive.  Over provisioning also provides for remapping of blocks should the bad blocks be discovered during wear leveling, which unlike a hard drive, does not reduce the end user capacity of the drive. The replaced blocks simply come from the over provisioning.
    http://thessdreview.com/ssd-guides/optimization-guides/ssd-performance-loss-and- its-solution/
    Reducing the time GC takes
    Increasing the amount of freespace available after a GC (which increases the time it takes for performance to degrade after a GC)
    It lets the FTL have a wider selection of pages to choose from when it when it need a new page to write to, which means it has a better chance of finding low write count pages, increasing the lifespan of the drive
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  • Adding an mSATA SSD to an X230

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    Русскоязычное Сообщество   English Community   Deutsche Community   Comunidad en Español

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    Sparkles1
    I work on behalf of HP
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  • G500 - Is it possible to install a mSATA SSD drive?

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    Hi MestreKaito,
    Welcome to Lenovo Community Forums!
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    Do post us back for further queries.
    Best Regards
    Shiva Kumar
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  • Can i install a 32gb msata ssd drive on my hp envy 6 1002tx laptop?

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    BH
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    Make it easier for other people to find solutions by marking a Reply 'Accept as Solution' if it solves your problem.

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