Installing windows 10 on an SSD on HP Pavilion G6 Laptop

I recently bought an SSD with a caddy and put it in my HP Pavilion G6 laptop. However, I am unable to install Windows on the SSD.

I had formatted my SSD into NTFS drives with GPT. My primary partition was bigger than my current C drive.

These are the things I have tried already:

I cloned my C drive to a partition on the SSD. However, the laptop didn't recognise the SSD as a boot disk. There is no option in the BIOS to change the boot priority of the drives.
I tried running Windows setup directly from an ISO file. It copied files but after the first restart, gave an error saying Windows was unable to complete configuration, please restart to complete. Restarting doesn't work and eventually it boots back into the original OS installed on the SSD.
I tried running the setup from a pen drive, but I got an error saying the boot drive didn't work. Interestingly, I had installed windows on my HDD just 3 months back using the same pen drive created using Rufus.

I'm at my wits end. I don't know what else I can do. It seems like Microsoft and HP have purposely blocked the possibility of moving the OS out of the default HDD. The BIOS setup seems like a stripped down version. There are a total of 5 options which can be configured in the entire BIOS. Basically there's nothing apart from changing the boot order of the devices.

Did you try to connect the SSD to the HDD sata port instead of the DVD sata port?
Remove the hdd, just put the ssd in, delete all the partitions on it and do a fresh install instead.

W

Have you confirmed that hdd also has GPT & not MBR partition scheme?

Before suggesting a new copy of Windows on SSD, could you tell how did you "clone" your existing C drive to your partition in SSD?
Almost every drive manufacturer has their own clone software (which works with their hardware only) which can do everything for you. You don't even have to do anything extra to make your SSD bootable. I'd suggest to use that software for cloning purpose, if haven't tried already.
For ex. Samsung has "Samsung Data Migration Software for Consumer SSD" to migrate everything from HDD to a samsung SSD, which works like a charm (saying by my own experience). Once done, you get two entries of OS during boot (one OS from HDD and other from SSD). Just boot into the OS from SSD and format your C drive in HDD.

Clone HDD OS to SSD, remove SSD from the caddy, put it in the laptop's 2.5" drive bay. It should boot up. Just for clarification, don't have HDD in caddy just yet. If OS boots from SSD, just put in the HDD in caddy & wipe its OS & other hidden partitions.

I got a new laptop a few months ago & I couldn't find an option to change the boot order. I then booted the recovery drive (there's an option in Win10 to create it), went to Advanced options or something for a cmd terminal & wiped the HDD using diskpart. That did the trick for me & my laptop started booting from OS in the SSD.

Hi all, thanks for all the suggestions.
I managed to do a clean install using a freshly downloaded ISO of Windows. For some reason the old ISO I had was not working.
I could not figure out what the problem was, but now my windows is working from the SSD.

Thanks for the replies.

@Randy_Marsh I could not find a cloning software from Kingston. I had used Easeus backup. That hadn't worked.

I had not tried plugging the SSD in the HDD's place.

W

Kingston does not provide cloning software with their ssd.For backup/restore though macrium reflect free is the best software as far as reliability is concerned(as per online posts & comments).

Found that Kingston has partnered with Acronis for the utility.
Acronis True Image Download and Instructions | Kingston
which requires you to have a 16 character key to activate the software. Did you get any such key with the SSD? (in the packaging maybe)

*media.kingston.com/support/images/acronis-img-requirements.jpg

W

Randy_Marsh said:
Found that Kingston has partnered with Acronis for the utility.
Acronis True Image Download and Instructions | Kingston
which requires you to have a 16 character key to activate the software. Did you get any such key with the SSD? (in the packaging maybe)

Old or not available with budget/lower end models.My friend also uses Kingston A400 ssd & didn't receive any acronis key.Reviews on amazon(both India & US) can confirm this.

whitestar_999 said:
Old or not available with budget/lower end models.My friend also uses Kingston A400 ssd & didn't receive any acronis key.Reviews on amazon(both India & US) can confirm this.

This is bad news, and a point worth noted

Thank you for sharing!

Randy_Marsh said:
This is bad news, and a point worth noted Thank you for sharing!

Macrium is good enough, although I think only Samsung has their own software & that works pretty good.