Machine will not boot when drive is connected.

[tricky]

One of our 6-core i7 machines isn't booting anymore. When we disconnect its one and only drive (a Sandisk Extreme SSD drive) the machine goes into BIOS. When we connect the drive, it stalls at the screen where it offers pressing F2 or DELETE to enter BIOS. Pressing the buttons does nothing.

I have taken the drive and connected it to my own workstation using a HD dock. It seems OK to me.

I have swapped the SATA cable, and swapped the port on the motherboard, but no joy.

The motherboard is an ASUS P9X79. I am just updating the BIOS to the latest version, but I can't imagine that will help. Is there anything else to try before contemplating finding a replacement, identical motherboard?

[tricky]

Further testing has confirmed that it is a problem with the SSD drive. We have identical machines and I swapped out the hard disk for the other and it boots fine. I also put the problem drive in the good machine and BIOS failed.

I didn't know a drive could stop a system even getting to BIOS! That's new to me.

So, rather than reinstalling Windows/Max/Vray etc etc etc, I am wondering if I could clone the drive from a working machine that has the same spec? Would that work? How would Windows OS licensing work? Also, would it log onto our domain OK if I am cloning all the software etc?

Assuming cloning is a workable option, any suggestions on what software to use?