Disk Boot Failure, but with a twist.

EchoFox · 12 Apr 2010 at 16:16

I turn on my PC and can't access my secondary hard drive (I have two, internal). I take a look, plug them back in, and then:

"DISK BOOT FAILURE, INSERT SYSTEM DISK AND PRESS ENTER,"

So I assume my primary HDD is borked, but it's showing up in the BIOS and not clicking or anything.

After a while messing around with W7 recovery stuff, I just unplug the secondary HDD and now everything works fine. Just, you know, I can't access anything on that drive (not to say it isn't all backed up).

Tl;Dr: why would a HDD besides the one I'm booting from cause a Disk Boot Failure message on Boot?

Update: That's odd. Plugged the second drive back in for the lulz and it works now. Windows 7 also claims to have "installed" it, like it was a new piece of software. What the frak is going on?

Mikoyan · 13 Apr 2010 at 11:04

my guess is boot device priority it wasnt booting off your main os drive.

EchoFox · 14 Apr 2010 at 13:16

Nope. Everything was working fine one day, didn't start up the next. I didn't change the boot priorities. All I did to fix it was remove the hard drives and plug them in again, which doesn't explain to me why it happened.

rpstewart · 14 Apr 2010 at 14:21

EchoFox said:
which doesn't explain to me why it happened.

Loose cables. Thermal cycling and vibrations can cause them to very slowly work loose. Everything's fine until one day the contact is finally lost.

EchoFox · 14 Apr 2010 at 19:56

oohh, that would explain the situation perfectly, and since I have no contrary evidence I'll have to assume that's what the problem was.

Well, thanks for the help.