BIOS refuses to boot from main SATA HDD after installing second SATA HDD

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Angolmagyar

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Jul 8, 2014
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So originally, I had a WD 1TB Blue SATA 6GB/s 7200RPM 64MB 3.5" Hard Drive installed when I built my rig, and it worked fine. I installed a 280GB HDD from my old computer (don't know the brand or the type, all I know is it was SATA, 280GB) as a secondary, for a while, and it worked fine. Now, about a year and a half later, my 1TB hard drive filled up, so i bought another, Generic 1 TB SATA 3.5" inch 16MB cache, 7200 RPM, installed it, and it works perfectly fine, so does the original, except for 1 thing... When i turn on the pc, it gives me the "missing ntldr" error, as it's trying to boot from the second HDD which has no OS on it. So i go into the bios to change the boot priority back, thinking while I installed the other HDD in SATA slot 3, and the main 1 in SATA slot 2, the bios must have confused it, and made it primary... Now, in the boot menu, it lists the CD/DvD drive as primary (as it is in SATA slot 1) and the second HDD i just installed... and that's it. it does not list the main HDD at all, i have to manually open the boot menu and select the WD HDD that i want to boot from, every time i turn on my computer. I've tried everything I could think of, reset the bios to factory settings, digitally and manually, by removing the button battery from the mobo, clearing out all the power from the rig, and putting it back in, switching up the SATA data cables, even switched the power supply cable coming from the PSU, and nothing, it just keeps doing the same thing. I have nothing left i could do, and usually I can fix my own issues, as i usually fix everyone's PC issues in the neighborhood... So if anyone has any idea how I can fix this, I would greatly appreciate it. thanks in advance.

p.s. I don't think it's the PSU, as when i manually boot from the main HDD, both hard drives work fine and as fast as they can be.

My rig:
Asus Z97-K S1150 Intel Z97 DDR3 ATX
Asus GeForce GTX 750 Ti 2GB PCI-E 3.0 HDMI OC
Intel Core i5-4690K 3.50GHz 6MB S1150 Quad Core (stock fan)
Corsair 8GB (2 x 4GB) Vengeance Pro Black DDR3 1866MHz CL9
WD 1TB Blue SATA 6GB/s 7200RPM 64MB 3.5" Hard Drive
Generic 1TB SATA 3.5" inch 16MB 7200 RPM
Samsung 24x SH-224DB DVD-RW SATA Retail (3 Bezels)
2x CoolerMaster SickleFlow 120 Red LED Fan - 120mm, 2000RPM
and a 750W PSU that came with the case, but i can't find the brand and make.. its ATX 750W 37A, 20 + 4 rail, SATA + PCI-E cables, EMI reduction design (whatever that means)
 
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Shaun o

Shaun o

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Oct 7, 2007
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On the page where you select the boot order of devices if you scroll down.
You will see two or more options to select a drive.

Listed boot drives.

1. Eg Kingston 240Gb Boot able OS drive.

2. LG DVD ROM.


Make sure the Cms mode of the bios is enabled and set to manual, enabled.

And that the bios boot order detection of hardware is set to Uefi/Legacy OProm.

Then in the main boot order of devices also make sure the first device is set to the Os boot drive or partition also.
Eg: 1. Kingston 240GB Boot able OS drive.

1. Kingston 240 GB boot able OS drive.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.

Remember you have two bios modes so both the Legacy hardware, and the Uefi hardware capable drives.
Each pointing to the booting drive for each bios mode Legacy, or Uefi bios mode.

Make sense ?
 
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Angolmagyar

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Nope... makes no sense at all, but it is almost 4 a.m. here, so i'll read that again tomorrow :) thanks for the quick reply.

for the record, here is what my bios looks like. I tried to include all parts relevant, both the simple mode and the advanced mode. as you can see, on the simple mode, on the right, you see 2 drives, first the cd/dvd drive and second the hitachi HDD, which.... i thought was Generic whatever... i guess ebay lied.. but thats aside the point, it still works. and you cant see the western digital HDD, the 1 with the OS on it. but when you hit f8 or click on the boot menu, a window comes up with all 3 bootable drives, so its there, and i can boot from it, i just have to do it manually each time..
images' link: http://imgur.com/a/mMvwB

I read carefully what you said and i was looking at whats on my screen, and it looks like its set the way you explained it, but i dont know for sure, because im a noob, for lack of a better term, in bios control, and i'd rather not touch it until i know for sure what im doing.
 
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Angolmagyar

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Ok, thanks for your help, but I got it fixed.. i don't remember what option i chose, but in the boot section of the bios, near the bottom there was some option that went into a different menu where it said "boot option #1: Hitachi ..." and "boot option #2: WDC ..." and i just changed #1 to WDC and #2 to hitachi, and that fixed it... i dont know why my pc did this now, as like i said, i've installed a HDD before and it never did this... though it was a different HDD, only 280GB, maybe some hardware settings on it prevented this from happening.. i dont know, point is its fixed, so thanks for your help :)
 
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