Ok, so I've had a third hard drive in my PC which I've left alone in case I needed any information from it after switching to my SSD. I finally realized I don't need to keep it as a backup anymore, and wanted to wipe it and then use it for extra storage for my SSD. So I popped in DBAN and selected just the hard drive I used as a backup for wipe. I selected quick erase and told it to verify. After it finished, I took the disk out and hit reset and then my PC was acting like it didn't know what to boot from.
The SSD has been the boot device all along and was set to boot after the disc drive. I tried switching the boot order but nothing seemed to matter. It wouldn't even boot off the DBAN disc anymore. So I stuck the Win 7 installation disc I had and it booted. When I get to the install windows screen where I can choose the drive, I see the drive I just formatted with unallocated space which looks correct, and I see my SSD with Win 7 on it and my other storage drive which both have free space which indicate to me they were not wiped (thank god).
So now I want to know, first off why am I unable to boot off my SSD? DBAN was told only to wipe the other drive. One caveat possibly, the other drive had Windows 7 on it and I was able to dual boot. I don't see why this should have affected the SSD at all. Second, do I just need to install Win 7 on top of my old install for the SSD? I want to be ABSOLUTELY certain I don't lose any data as I have a large amount of documents which I cannot lose. Before anyone fusses at me about backups - I did back them up, on to the other drive...the second one which I didn't format that I've been using for storage. I just want to be sure if I need to hook these drives up to another PC, save all my vital data, and then install Win 7 on it or not.
I contemplated physically unhooking the drives except the one I wanted to wipe, but I thought it would be a bit excessive so I just verified many times that the drive I selected was the only one I wanted formatted. Partitions are all fully intact on the other drives. Any ideas what I should do here??
I just checked the repair option, no OS shows up when I try it. I really feel like what happened is the MBR for my SSD got wiped, so Windows is probably fine under there. I don't guess there would be any way to fix that? Also my documents and such that are important are not on the SSD they are on the storage hard drive (The one I didn't wipe). That drive had nothing special done to it, as I use it purely as storage for all the stuff that I don't want clogging my SSD up.
The SSD has been the boot device all along and was set to boot after the disc drive. I tried switching the boot order but nothing seemed to matter. It wouldn't even boot off the DBAN disc anymore. So I stuck the Win 7 installation disc I had and it booted. When I get to the install windows screen where I can choose the drive, I see the drive I just formatted with unallocated space which looks correct, and I see my SSD with Win 7 on it and my other storage drive which both have free space which indicate to me they were not wiped (thank god).
So now I want to know, first off why am I unable to boot off my SSD? DBAN was told only to wipe the other drive. One caveat possibly, the other drive had Windows 7 on it and I was able to dual boot. I don't see why this should have affected the SSD at all. Second, do I just need to install Win 7 on top of my old install for the SSD? I want to be ABSOLUTELY certain I don't lose any data as I have a large amount of documents which I cannot lose. Before anyone fusses at me about backups - I did back them up, on to the other drive...the second one which I didn't format that I've been using for storage. I just want to be sure if I need to hook these drives up to another PC, save all my vital data, and then install Win 7 on it or not.
I contemplated physically unhooking the drives except the one I wanted to wipe, but I thought it would be a bit excessive so I just verified many times that the drive I selected was the only one I wanted formatted. Partitions are all fully intact on the other drives. Any ideas what I should do here??
I just checked the repair option, no OS shows up when I try it. I really feel like what happened is the MBR for my SSD got wiped, so Windows is probably fine under there. I don't guess there would be any way to fix that? Also my documents and such that are important are not on the SSD they are on the storage hard drive (The one I didn't wipe). That drive had nothing special done to it, as I use it purely as storage for all the stuff that I don't want clogging my SSD up.