Installed SSD But Cannot Switch Boot Drive (Win8)

ECM

Member
Hi,

I've seen variations on this question posted, but not this particular one, so hopefully someone can point me in the correct direction.

Basically I installed an SSD in my computer and transfered an image of the pre-existing OS over to it.

What i want to do now is set the SSD as the boot drive, replacing the old C: drive.

The thing is, even though the SSD (and C: drive) is a primary partition, I get the error message:

An attempt was made to change the boot partition to a logical drive, which is not allowed. The boot partition must be a primary partition.

Please either select a different drive or convert selected drive to primary first, then try again.

Any ideas where I'm going wrong? (This is using the "Change boot drive" option in the BCD Backup/Repair tab.)

Thanks very much for any help you can render.

EDIT: I also tried cloning the boot drive to the SSD but it ends with the same error.
 
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Please attach a screenshot of your Disk Management and paste the text from EasyBCD > view settings (detailed mode), as described in the sticky if you need help.
 
Unfortunately the screenshots don't provide all the information. Can you expand the "status" column so that all the flags are visible, and move the error message from EasyBCD to reveal what the parameters underneath were, and is the original HDD formatted as MBR or GPT ?
 
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You should be specifying "H" as the destination for the "change boot.." if you're trying to make the SSD bootable. (EasyBCD always uses the lettering as seen by the running system, else how can it tell where you mean ?)
Nevertheless, copying to C would still have worked (if not being what you wanted to achieve) on an MBR formatted drive, so I can only assume that GPT is responsible for the failure to launch.
I'll refer it to the author for confirmation.
 
Yes, that was just a screenshot. I tried to get H: to work with the same error message after various reboots, clones vs. images, etc.

(C: does work fine, which I checked when I was having the initial problems with H: just to verify.)

I'll wait for confirmation from you before formatting H: as MBR and trying again.

Thanks.
 
Hi again,

I tried formatting as MBR, but it still pops up the same error message--maybe it's just incompatible with the SSD I have? (ADATA SX900)
 
Sorry for bumping this old thread, but it is also to demonstrate how long this issue has been around, apparently still unresolved.

Even after recreating a partition as a Primary partition and formatting it with MiniTool I still get the EasyBCD warning message: "Operation Not Allowed! An attempt was made to change the boot partition to a logical drive, which is not allowed. The boot partition must be a primary partition." All tools and disk managers tell me it IS a primary partition. Not primary enough for EasyBCD, though.

Like MANY users on this forum I too am running into this issue whilst trying to get an SSD to be the boot drive on a Windows 8 laptop. Anyone any idea what the solution could be?
 
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