New SSD not working

My Inspiron laptop kept running out of disk space. It came with one SSD of 100 gig and a regular hard drive of 1 tb. The boot drive was the SSD. I bought a 256 gig SSD and cloned the smaller device to the larger device using easus. Removed the 100 gig and installed the 256 gig. Tried to boot and the system can't find a bootable device. I can reinstall the smaller SSD and start over but the bios boot options don't list any SSD device. What am I missing?

Some trial and error steps:



a) test the drives in another computer


b) boot to the BIOS > test settings: ACHI, IDE, RAID


c) boot to the BIOS > test settings: without and with CSM


d) disable VMD / reinstall IRST



e) reset the BIOS:

How to Clear Your Computers CMOS to Reset BIOS Settings:

3 Ways to Reset Your BIOS - wikiHow:

jhill8b said:

I bought a 256 gig SSD and cloned the smaller device to the larger device using easus.

Click to expand...

Common thread in multiple forums - cloning failure, irrespective of the software

Best option, image existing > restore image to new drive. A few extra steps, a little bit extra work, but far fewer posts in forums about image failures cf. cloning failures

Forum favourite : Macrium Reflect (freeware version still available from majorgeeks) or direct from Macrium archives

EDIT
May need device drivers. Cloning doesn't always do this. When you image, and create the restore boot USB, make sure you include the drivers (good imaging software should either auto do this, or at least ask if you want to include drivers)

EDIT2
100GB > 256GB ? Hardly worth it. Minimum 500GB, ideal 1TB

Welcome to the forum

Set the BIOS as AHCI, reboot, look again.

If I were the OP, I would just download an ISO and load a clean install After, get a ssd enclosure and move the data you want to the new drive. Windows will activate anyways as soon as you log in to your microsoft account.