Windows 10 Booting To Wrong Drive

maj · 10 Aug 2016 at 21:32

Wasn't sure whether to put this here or in the Windows forum but since I think it's hardware related, this might be the best place.

With my recent hard drive problems (thread here) I thought I'd try updating firmware on my 1TB mechanical drive so downloaded the official WD tool. It wouldn't detect the hard drive and then W10 froze. Upon restarting it refused to boot into Windows. A process of elimination lead me to believe that despite bios set to boot to SSD first, it was trying to boot to my other drive. If I disconnect it Windows boots to the SSD fine which proves my initial thinking right.

How do I tell computer to boot to my SSD when I have two drives connected? I've tried fix mbr. Other drive is my storage drive so I need both working.

Thanks for any help.

Finners · 10 Aug 2016 at 21:35

You need to go into your Motherboard BIOS, usually by hitting the DEL button or F2 as soon as you turn your computer on. Just keep tapping key until you get into your BIOS.

You can find out which key it is either in your Motherboards Manual or the screen that flashes up before Windows starts to load. Sometimes however on newer computer they boot up so fast its hard to read.

In there you can edit you hard drive boot priority.

maj · 10 Aug 2016 at 21:37

Finners said:
You need to go into your Motherboard BIOS, usually by hitting the DEL button or F2 as soon as you turn your computer on. Just keep tapping key until you get into your BIOS.

You can find out which key it is either in your Motherboards Manual or the screen that flashes up before Windows starts to load. Sometimes however on newer computer they boot up so fast its hard to read.

In there you can alter you Hard drive boot priority

SSD is set as first boot already. Problem is it seems to want to boot to my other drive regardless. Everything was fine till I tried to update firmware on it.

Diskpart confirms drive is set as boot device. Just makes no sense while it won't boot with other hard drive connected.

lude1962 · 10 Aug 2016 at 23:02

how far does it get trying to boot with both drives disconnected?
'Everything was fine till I tried to update firmware on it.' - windows can hang if other drives in the system are faulty/unreadable

booting with just the ssd , does windows logs mention any errors?

maj · 11 Aug 2016 at 09:00

lude1962 said:
how far does it get trying to boot with both drives disconnected?
'Everything was fine till I tried to update firmware on it.' - windows can hang if other drives in the system are faulty/unreadable

booting with just the ssd , does windows logs mention any errors?

Not tried with both disconnected. At the moment even the SSD won't boot as it's missing key boot files. Why updating the firmware on my data drive has screwed my SSD I don't know. I'm currently creating a recovery disk so I can repair the missing/damaged files. Failing that with all the the recent problems I'm just gonna back everything I need to my portable drive and wipe both drives and start from scratch again.

bledd · 11 Aug 2016 at 09:29

When installing Windows, always remove all other disks, this makes sure all the boot files etc are on a single disk.

Jony27 · 11 Aug 2016 at 10:07

bledd said:
When installing Windows, always remove all other disks, this makes sure all the boot files etc are on a single disk.

This is something I didn't do and now parts of Windows is on my old drive and the rest on my new one.

When I try to remove the old one, it just won't boot. I just finished reinstalling everything too.

What's the best way to go about this?

Mel_P · 11 Aug 2016 at 10:20

Jony27 said:
This is something I didn't do and now parts of Windows is on my old drive and the rest on my new one.

When I try to remove the old one, it just won't boot. I just finished reinstalling everything too.

What's the best way to go about this?

I would be interested in the answer - one of my data drives says "system" - suggesting it has some windows files on it?

maj · 11 Aug 2016 at 16:58

Well after repairing Windows everything seems to be back to normal (140mb write & 120mb read) but not sure what exact figures should be and it boots into Windows with both drives connected. Anyway it's moved the recovery partition from the C drive to it's own drive which is slightly annoying as makes it look like I have 3 hard drives. Might look into moving it back onto the C drive (SSD). Is this risky or should I just leave it as it is?

I'd love to know how trying to update firmware screwed up the drive it wasn't even updating the firmware on though.

Spoke too soon. 30 seconds later whole of froze and when I reboot it doesn't boot and I get inaccessible boot device error. Think I'm gonna try formatting my data drive on case it has some system files on it causing problems