Dell Optiplex 5090 SFF issues

[River Valley Computer]

Last week we received 10 Dell Optiplex 5090 SFF refurbished computers. We have never had 5090s before. The problem we are having is they have internal 1TB M.2 installed. We want to remove those and install SATA 512GB drives. We have tried 5 different ones and NONE of them will boot to the 2.5" SSDs. We tried to install a fresh Windows 11 on several and no go. The BIOS doesn't show the Windows Manager in the Boot sequence nor the SSD. And before you ask we checked the BIOS, etc.

This has the three of us are stumped. We have probably sold over 500 various Optiplexs and never had this issue.

To the person who can tell us what is wrong we will drink a Bud Lite in thanks.

 

[Kitten Kong]

Last week we received 10 Dell Optiplex....

To the person who can tell us what is wrong we will drink a Bud Lite in thanks.

It's a dell.

 

[timeshifter]

Did you try turning off RAID / RST mode in BIOS and just use ACHI?

 

[lan101]

Did you try turning off RAID / RST mode in BIOS and just use ACHI?

That seems to be the trick almost every time I've ran into that issue on dells.

 

[River Valley Computer]

That seems to be the trick almost every time I've ran into that issue on dells.

Yep - it was set to ACHI. We did reset the BIOS to factory and then verified things like ACHI, etc. that we thought were needed we set properly.

 

[seashore]

ChatGPT says it's a proprietary SATA cable.

Optiplex 5090 boot issue

A conversational AI system that listens, learns, and challenges

chatgpt.com

 

[HCHTech]

We want to remove those and install SATA 512GB drives.

Why? I don't understand the end game here. "Phew! It was a lot of work, but we finally gave you a smaller, slower drive!"

 

[River Valley Computer]

Why? I don't understand the end game here. "Phew! It was a lot of work, but we finally gave you a smaller, slower drive!"

Good question. They have an obsolete software package that is no longer supported. What we wanted to do was to install their SATA drives from the old computer to the new ones and then upgrade to Windows 11.

 

[Blues]

What about cloning old drives to the M.2 drives?

 

[timeshifter]

Good question. They have an obsolete software package that is no longer supported. What we wanted to do was to install their SATA drives from the old computer to the new ones and then upgrade to Windows 11.

Agree with cloning to the new system's NVMe drives. Also, keep the old drives somewhere safe and or keep a couple of image copies somewhere safe, since it sounds like that's their only avenue for keeping the old program alive.