Hi everyone, I need some help with my new Alienware 15 R2 laptop. For reasons I don't care to mention, I needed to do a clean install of the OS. The way my pc was setup was with the OS on the SSD and the SATA drive being simply a data drive for my User files (Documents, Music, etc).
Beforehand I made the Windows Recovery Image on a USB key (got the link/file from the Dell drivers page for my pc). Then I booted from the USB key and went through the Reset my PC prompts, choosing the setting that removed all personal files, apps and settings. The computer ran through the process but somewhere along the line something went wrong (not sure since I left it running overnight) and it said windows could not complete the reset due to an error. So I attempted to run through the same steps again and this time it worked. However, after the install I realized that the OS had been installed on the SATA drive, and the SSD was not even visible by Windows file explorer, device manager, etc. I had to install the Intel Rapid Storage driver manually before Windows recognized the SSD drive.
After searching the interwebs I couldn't find out how to easily "switch" the OS from the SATA to the SSD. So I plugged the Windows Recovery Image USB key back in and attempted to reset again, hoping things would fix themselves or I would be given the option to select the HDD to install the OS to. Well, neither of those happened; The OS installed again to the SATA drive.
My last idea was to unplug the SATA drive, then try the Windows Recovery Image. Unfortunately I got errors with the Reset my PC options. If I selected the Keep My Personal Files option the error mentioned something about having a locked partition/drive. If I selected the Remove All Files option the error says something about missing a required partition/drive.
For those that were able to read this whole rant, any ideas/help? I want to get my Alienware laptop back to day one status with the OS on the SSD and the SATA as the extra data drive. If anyone could please help out I would very much appreciate it.