New Hard drive - PC won't boot without old (non system) disk

gupott

gupott

gupott

Associate
Joined
26 May 2008
Posts
236
Hi there,

I recently picked up a WD 10tb drive as I was hoping to retire at least one of my older legacy drives. I received the drive and copied across everything I wanted onto the new drive leaving nothing on my old 1tb Seagate drive. My system drive (with windows installed) is a Samsung SSD, so I didn't think i would have any problems when I unplugged the 1tb Seagate drive, but with it unplugged the PC won't boot. I have checked and double checked in the bios and I am sure it is set to boot from the Samsung. There is also nothing on the Seagate but the machine refuses to boot unless it is connected.

Anyone any ideas? Thanks.
 
The old drive (1tb Seagate) is not a system drive. I had some media stored on it, that was what has now been moved off to the new WD.
 
Problem is Windows can write system files to other connected drives sometimes without you even knowing, for this reason I alwys only have my boot drive connected when installing Windows.

What happens when you try to boot without the 1Tb drive in, do you get any error messages, does it POST etc.
 
No, well I get the mobo splash screen then it tries to boot and I get an error message. I plug the, in theory, blank disk back in and despite not even booting from it, the PC will start normally.
 
I have had a bit of route around in my man drawer (one of several). I have unearthed a windows 7 pro disk - although it does say something about being an upgrade disk. I have also found a windows 8 32b and 64b disks. I am thinking I should try the 64bit windows 8 disk first. Any thoughts, I can't see a key as of yet for the windows 8 disk although the windows 7 disk does have a product key.

I also had a look at all my drives in MiniTool Partition, it seems my current system disk is set as boot however the 1tb Seagate I am looking to retire is set to 'active & system'. I can actually change the active status with the tool but I think it may make things worse if I have misunderstood.
 
Boot it up,id if you're on windows 7 or 8 and if it's 32 or 64 bit.

https://www.howtogeek.com/206329/how-to-find-your-lost-windows-or-office-product-keys/

https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/software-download/windows7

there is another site for old windows images somewhere too.


If you can set your boot drive to active that could be worth trying first,if it doesn't work try unplugging the 1tb and try again,if it still doesn't work either revert the changes or keep a written record of what you are doing.
 
If you can set your boot drive to active that could be worth trying first,if it doesn't work try unplugging the 1tb and try again,if it still doesn't work either revert the changes or keep a written record of what you are doing.
Click to expand...

My main worry here, is if I do this and get it wrong, then I won't be able to get into the machine to switch it back.
 
Did you clone the System partition with the OS partition?

If not you'll need to run bcdboot to copy boot files to the root of the new OS partition.

Do you have a spare USB to use as a bootable WinPE drive? Once at work I'll share a WinPE ISO if you need and and post some instructions.
 
I had a similar issue after a clone..
Ended up fixing it by unplugging all non system drives and running all the boot fix commands from a windows flash drive, fix mbr, sfc scan etc. There's about 5 or 6 commands to run. (just Google 'fix mbr') Doesn't take that long really and it's a strange issue... But easily fixed with a few CMD commands. Just make sure you change the target drive from 'x' (the Windows boot media) to 'c'

Even if you end up borking the the mbr on the system drive the drive will still be readable from another system forffile recovery .. its just Windows being funny.
 
Last edited:
Does the original 1TB drive still boot and function ok?

If it does remove all other drives apart from the new one from the mobo and use Macrium Reflect to clone the image from the 1TB drive over to the new drive.

Having said that,doesn't windows have issues if it's installed onto a larger than 2 or 3TB drive?
 
Does all this malarky still apply with GPT disks (i.e. non-MBR)?

I have my OS installed on an M.2 drive. Today I added a second SSD via SATA. Windows calls the M.2 drive Disk 1 and the new SATA drive Disk 0.

So if I reformat Windows 10 will it install boot loaders and such things on Disk 0 instead of Disk 1 now? And if Disk 0 is ever removed, the system won't boot? Or is all that down to legacy Master Boot Record partitioning?
 
ic1male said:
Does all this malarky still apply with GPT disks (i.e. non-MBR)?

I have my OS installed on an M.2 drive. Today I added a second SSD via SATA. Windows calls the M.2 drive Disk 1 and the new SATA drive Disk 0.

So if I reformat Windows 10 will it install boot loaders and such things on Disk 0 instead of Disk 1 now? And if Disk 0 is ever removed, the system won't boot? Or is all that down to legacy Master Boot Record partitioning?
Click to expand...
If you reformat and reinstall windows 10 you should only have the drive you're installing it to connected so that it doesn't put the bootloader on another drive.
 
I have only just come back to this after getting my NAS set up. Anyway, I have tried a couple of things, both unsuccessful. Firstly I unplugged the 1TB drive and inserted my windows discs, and try as a I might, I could not get to the repair screen, so no luck there. Basically it won't boot successfully from the disc, I just get into a loop. Secondly, in Partition Wizard 10, I set the C: (where windows is installed) to active and rebooted. Nope, windows did not like that at all. I had to point the bios at the 1TB drive to get back into windows where I went back into partition wizard 10 to undo my mistake.

I am now wondering about setting up a windows flash drive and trying the boot fix commands as suggested by mattyfez.

Does anyone else have any thoughts?
 
Download the latest hirens boot CD, burn to a disc or use rufus to make a boot able flash drive. Boot from. That and it'll boot into windows 10 pe, in there is a utility to fix windows boot problems. It is extremely useful.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom