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

[Mel_P]

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

 

[wazza300]

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

 

[Mel_P]

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

Does this pose any risk of making my system unbootable though?

 

[wazza300]

no it just fixes the boot record

you wont lose any data

 

[Mel_P]

Think I will run WHS and make a "C" drive disk image first though!

Thanks. Mel