How to boot from mSATA SSD (Dell Inspiron 14 7437)

Inspiron 14 7437 is my recent purchase and I haven't used other laptops except my current one (Acer Aspire 4820T) that is about 4 years old. Therefore I didn't know about mSATA slot and how to install it. For other laptops it might be easy and straightforward to use the mSATA slot and it is exactly same as SATA drives. You just install mSATA drive and reorder the boot priority. Unfortunately, it was not such an easy thing for Dell Inspiron 14 because the mSATA slot is not recognized as a bootable media in BIOS.

So you have to do some research to make this possible, and I'd like to share how I did.

I found out two links are useful to follow: link1 and link2. You may need Dell account to access link2. Belows are brief steps.

1. Update to Windows 8.1. You may need to update fully to see the Windows 8.1 update in the app store. Especially KB 2871389 and KB 2917499 should be updated before you try to find the Windows 8.1 update. Please see the link to troubleshoot this.

2. Install mSATA drive. Please see my previous blog for this.

3. Format the mSATA drive without partitions.

4. Clone the windows active partition to mSATA. You may want to clone all partitions to enable Factory recovery with the mSATA SSD, or you just can clone windows parition (C drive) to make partitions simple. I used Macrium Reflect Free to do this. If you want to clone all partitions, you need to drag and drop each partitions when you designate partitions to be cloned.

5. Reboot and enter to BIOS (holding F2 before Dell logo appears). Change SATA Operation from “Intel Smart Response Technology” to AHCI, Save settings and restart.

6. Reboot and you may start your system from an original HDD. Use Visual BCD 0.93 to change boot order. The above link2 said you need not to use EasyBCD 2.2 to avoid any troubles. I used Visual BCD 0.93 to change the boot order. Select Windows 8 in the loaders section. Change the two entries that has C: to D: (whatever where the cloned Windows system exists).

7. That's all. You can now see fast booting of Windows 8.1.

Dell Inspiron 14 7437 Laptop from Dell Outlet

Recently I purchased a laptop from Dell Outlet. It's Inspiron 14 7437 which is ultrathin (~0.6") and light (~4.2 lbs) considering its size (14" FHD screen). Please see the link to see the specs and review.

First impression was great until when I found out the screen is defective. The left lower part of the screen is not bright as remaining area and annoying. I called the Dell support and they kindly placed an replacement order for me. I appreciated their help and waited for the replacement, but unfortunately they sent a different model (Inspiron 14R 5437) that is thicker and heavier than the original order. I called them and they told that as I purchased a refurbished one (yes, this is correct) and they didn't have an exactly same one, they just sent the replacement similar to the original. They did not explain anything about the this policy and I wasted a few more days waiting for the replacement.

Anyway I decided to keep my original order and return the replacement. And then I called the Dell support to fix the defective screen and they sent a technician to replace the screen. I guess they used a refurbished screen to do this work as there are some minor scratches on the new screen. But I don't care about the minor scratches and I was happy to have a nice screen.

I also purchased a mSATA drive to use with my new laptop. I paid $122 for this little thing [link] and realized it's very small compared to typical 2.5" SSDs. I liked it and tried to install it to mSATA slot. There are a few steps to access mSATA slot, but it's not difficult. Please check the link to know how to access the laptop.

Left picture shows the uncovered bottom and you can see a battery (bottom) and a main board (top) with two fans.

One thing I want to tell is to be careful not to mess up cables around the main board. The laptop is designed to be compact and slim, there is not enough space and you should clean up cables after you access the mSATA slot. When I install the mSATA SSD, the touch screen cable was not properly placed at an original position resulting in the malfunctioning of touch screen. I spend a few hours the reason and solution of this problem. So please be careful when you access the bottom side of the main board where mSATA slot exists.

I'll post how to upgrade to Windows 8.1 and use the mSATA SSD as a boot drive.