New SSD will not boot

I’m looking for advice on how I can get my new SSD to run as the boot drive.
I purchased a WD Blue 3D NAND SSD to replace a Hitachi HHD on my desk top with a MSI H55M-E23 motherboard.
I installed and cloned the SSD drive using Macrium Reflect. Both drives are 1T and are just over half full after cloning.
I initialized the drive, set a drive letter and change the boot sequence so the SSD is the primary boot.
The system boots to my old HDD. I even change the internal wires on the motherboard so the SSD was plugged where the HDD was and vice versa with same result.
When I unplug the HDD from the motherboard - I get error message: “Reboot and select proper boot device or insert boot media in selected boot device and press a key”. I also unplugged the DVD drive with the same result.
Once and only once during the many reboot attempt did I get the initial black screen with the blue windows logo without hearing the pitter-patter of the HHD. Unfortunately the logo remained on my screen for over 5 minutes when I rebooted and it booted to the HHD again.
When both drives are plugged in and the system boot with the HHD, both the SSD drive and HDD are recognized and display in the device manager and file explorer without error messages
The fix for how I can use the new SSD as a boot drive would be much appreciated? MY HHD is painfully slow and runs constantly.
Many thanks!
Michael

Humm…I just installed a WD 1TB Blue SSD in my PC and had no issues. I used Reflect too. Here is how I did it:

  1. Inserted new WD SSD into an empty drive bay
  2. Started PC on old HDD
  3. Partitioned the new SSD with Windows Disk Management
  4. Started reflect and told it to clone the old drive and selected the new SSD as the target
  5. When finished I removed the old HDD and entered BIOS on the PC and made sure BIOS would be using the new SSD be the 1st bootable device

Booted up fine for me.

Something might not have been done correctly with your cloning (I used default settings in Macrium Reflect)
You can make a Recovery Disk with Macrium Reflect that has options to repair boot problems. Remove the old HDD and only have the SSD connected and use a recovery disk to see if it can fix your boot issue.

Or - boot on old HDD and use Disk Management to remove the partitions on the SSD, make a new partition and try cloning again.

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Your advice was spot on. Many thanks.
I’m pretty sure I let Macrium Reflect do the partitions for me before the cloning (while you created your partitions with Windows Disc Manager. The only hic-up I had when creating and using the recovery disc was my uncertainty as to which partition to use for the boot. So I used the one Macrium Reflect had highlighted (system reserved partition) and the recovery disc fixed the boot issue on my new SSD.
I’m blown away by the speed of the windows boot. Less then 35 seconds for a boot that took 3 and half minutes this morning.
Many thanks for your assistance.

Great! I like success stories!

So I spoke a little too soon. When I went to my PC this morning, it appeared like the computer had done a “clean” reinstall of windows overnight. Most of my icons were gone and all settlings/ preferences for outlook, internet explorer, google chrome, BOX and ITunes were gone.
Don’t know why there was a delay in these changes/ deletions (everything looked fine last night) but suspect that has something to do with using the Macrium Reflect recovery disc I created to fix the boot issues and placing them on the " system reserved partition"? I used all the default settings recommended by the software when creating the recovery disc.

Will I be able to get my desktop and all settings back by again just cloning the system partition of the old HHD to the new SSD using Macrium Reflect? Or will it be something more involved? I really don’t want to re-imput all the settings, favorites and preference for all my applications.
Thanks!

Darn! You should be able to clone the old HDD again by inserting it back into the PC and connecting the new SSD on a USB port or to a SATA cable in the PC. You will probably have to get a boot menu up at startup of BIOS and select the old drive for booting if you connect via SATA cable. Usually F12 or F8 at boot but it depends on motherboard’s BIOS. You should see a message about it at boot. Might be a good idea to remove all existing partitions on the SSD before you start the clone process. Disk Manager should be able to do that.

BTW, I just installed an SSD in a friends PC (Zotac BI325). This time I just installed MR on the existing system, plugged in the new SSD on a USB adapter and then cloned HDD to new SSD. So the new SSD had no partitioning at all this time and all is well!