C drive Has Win7, but D Drive is "active" and system won't boot unless it's connected

Soldato
Joined
27 Feb 2004
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Kent
Hello,

I have a boot SSD with Win 7 on (and a spare SSD for photoshop cache and windows page file), and 2 x 1TB drives + 1 x 3TB drives for storage.

I want to replace the 1TB drives with 4TB drives (photo storage - getting full)

The 3TB is definitely "non-active" in disk manager.

The 1TB drives both say "active" and were (unfortunately) connected when I did my original Win 7 installation. However I reinstalled Win7 on to a bigger 240GB SSD last year with them disconnected so I shouldn't have on OS drives except on "C" drive"?

I can disconnect one of the 1TB drives and am currently copying the contents of this to a new 4TB drive installed in it's place (old 1TB drive installed on spare SATA port)

If I disconnect the other 1TB drive the system won't start. Says drive missing. If I reconnect it boots OK. I have seen instructions to make a drive "inactive" but if I do this will it make the whole thing unusable?

How do I overcome this without risking knackering my system? Or shall I just leave well alone?

Any advice please? Thanks, Mel
 
Last edited:
if you boot from windows disc and do startup repair(with the 1tb unplugged) it will fix the non boot when you disconnect the 1tb drive
 
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