Install a 2.5-inch hard drive inside the motherboard of the laptop.
Install a 2.5-inch hard drive inside the motherboard of the laptop.
Hey everyone. My mom recently got a Dell Inspiron 15 3511 with a 1TB NVMe SSD. We originally intended to use an external USB enclosure with the HDD in her old laptop, but we discovered the Dell had an empty 2.5" bay, so I installed the HDD inside. After booting, it worked fine the first couple times, but later it failed to detect the drive in File Explorer and Disk Management. I checked the BIOS, but it didn’t recognize it either. It seems the laptop was shipped with a RAID setup. Switching to AHCI/NVMe mode in BIOS fixed the issue, but Windows still crashes with BOOT_DEVICE_INACCESSIBLE. Is there a way to integrate the HDD into the RAID or enable AHCI/NVMe booting?
I believe there isn’t enough room to accommodate it, especially if it can physically fit but causes boot issues—it clearly indicates a configuration problem. Have you confirmed it’s still starting from the SSD? This kind of error usually happens when the OS partition is mixed up during boot.
I attempted to start the system by pressing the power button and selecting the boot menu, but both attempts resulted in the blue screen. Might secure boot be causing this issue? Updated January 30, 2023 by tddk25
You're trying to start from the laptop's original drive or the new one. The new drive won't work because of changed boot settings and might need a fresh bootloader. The old drive probably won't start due to missing drivers or hardware mismatches. Fastest fix is reinstalling Windows on the new drive. The best approach is rebuilding the bootloader via a recovery USB or CD.
Gather the items and relocate files. Present in a clean format. Clear any confusion.
It makes sense that the driver change affected booting. You might need to repair using EFI tools or reinstall Windows entirely if you want the current setup. If it’s still trying to boot from an old Windows version, you could fix it with utilities like BCDedit.
There aren't many files on the new computer, so I believe we should reinstall Windows. Thank you all for your assistance!