Can't boot with HDD without corrupted SSD also connected.

Joseph_14

Reputable
Oct 28, 2015
2
0
4,510
My computer was running a 1.0 TB mechanical drive along with a 120GB SSD. A few weeks ago my SSD was corrupted. I had a spare 3.0 TB drive that I hadn't gotten around to connecting so I used this as an opportunity. I ended up pulling out the 1.0 TB HDD and putting in the 3.0 and installing windows on the 3.0 TB HDD. My computer has been working like this since then. Everytime I boot it asks which system to boot and I select the Windows on the 3.0TB drive and everything goes fine.
In case you need it my drives are:
1.0TB HDD WD SATA/64MB Cache WD10EZEX
3.0TB HDD WD SATA/64MB Cache WD30EZRX
120GB SSD Kingston sv300s37a

I haven't gotten around to reformatting the SSD and I decided I wanted to swap it out for the 1.0TB drive since there are some files I wanted to pull off of it. I powered everything off, removed the SSD, added the HDD, powered on, and nothing booted. I got stuck on Verifying DMI Pool. I spent a while trying to fix this and boot off of my install disk but it wouldnt work.
After a while I had tried using only the 3.0 TB drive that I have been booting off of, but that didn't work. I tried only using the SSD but that gave me an error as I expected. I tried only using the 1.0 TB but it didnt work as expected since there is no OS. I tried all of these options booting off of the drive and trying to use my install disk. I finally reconnected it to the last working set up which was with my 3.0TB HDD and my corrupted SSD and suddenly it worked.
Why would I need a corrupted SSD to be connected as well as the HDD I'm booting off of? What do I need to do to boot with the SSD disconnected and both HDDs connected instead?
 
Welcome to the community, Joseph!

I'm sorry about the late reply! I think that what you are experiencing with the booting issues is an OS confusion. This is what happens when you install Windows OS onto a hard drive while having other HDDs connected to the motherboard. Windows tends to get confused and stores the system files randomly across the storage devices. Once you disconnect one of them, the system fails to boot.

The only way to resolve this is to perform a clean install onto the intended booting HDD again, however, this time make sure you disconnect the SSD and the other HDD from the motherboard until the fresh OS installation is completed.

Make sure you have backups of the data stored on the drive, though. A clean install would require you to re-format and erase everything on it.

Good luck! Hope I was helpful! :)
SuperSoph_WD
 

Joseph_14

Reputable
Oct 28, 2015
2
0
4,510
Thank you!

Since I posted this I reformatted my SSD but not my HDD. With the completely reformatted and wiped SSD connected the HDD still boots perfectly. Would this make sense based on what you thought happened? And would that also have prevented me from connecting a blank HDD and trying to boot off of an installation disk and install windows on the new HDD? I was unable to do this as well without the SSD connected.

Thank you!