SSD OS drive dissapears when external is powered on on boot.

[somdow]

hello everyone.

So the problem im having now is that, Whenever i boot up my pc, and my external drive is turned on, it completely removes my primary SSD boot drive thereby hanging my system up since it cant find the OS

i have 4 total drives on this pc.

the 90g SSD primary boot drive
and
2 other internal storage

and my main backup drive the 1.5tb one.


So what happens in more detail is that when i turn on the pc, if the 1.5tb is powered on, the pc cant find my SSD. if i turn it off, then restart, it goes through just fine.

when i have the problem, i go into the bios to set the SSD as prim boot drive, its not even seen until the 1.5tb drive is turned off and system restarted.

any ideas?

thanks in advanced.

 

[John_VanKirk]

Hi there,

Could the 1.5 TB removable HDD have been used previously as the boot drive?
Of course go to the BIOS and make sure the SSD is the HDD first boot priority.

Then go to Disk Management and look in the lower graphical section at all 4 of the drives. The drive the BIOS hands off control to is the one marked 'Active', and sounds like that may be assigned to the 1.5 TB drive now. If so, right click on the SSD and click on 'Mark Partition as Active' if it's not marked that way already. Only 1 partition can be active at a time.

Also possibly the 1.5 TB HDD may have the C: drive letter assigned to it also. Right click on the Volume Status section of that drive, and change the drive letter to something else, like K, for backUp.

Hopefully then, the big HDD won't will have a different and lower DriveLetter, and won't get handed the ball after the POST phase & try to run with it!

 

[somdow]

sup sup john V.

ok so nope...

im here in disk management and none of those apply to me.

3 internal drives and the big one is exxternal.

on the external 1.5tb, i never installed an OS on it. its strictly for backup.

the 90gig ssd " (boot,page file, primary partition) ( system, active,prim.partition) this oen is the "ACTIVE" one

all else are regular.

also, the ssd drive letter is C;

and just now, when i restarted same thing happened. (i knew it would)
so i went to BIOS and as long as the 1.5TB is connected, i dont even SEE the SSD on the boot list. i see 3 options all the 1.5TB options and one for the dvd drive.

and again when i click on any of them to see if the SSD is on there, so i can make it number one, it doesnt even show up. i have to disconnect the external tb drive, restart machine, let it load into windows, and then plug the ext back in.

any ideas?

lol thanks in advace.

 

[John_VanKirk]

sup sup john V.

ok so nope...

im here in disk management and none of those apply to me.

3 internal drives and the big one is exxternal.

on the external 1.5tb, i never installed an OS on it. its strictly for backup.

the 90gig ssd " (boot,page file, primary partition) ( system, active,prim.partition) this oen is the "ACTIVE" one

all else are regular.

also, the ssd drive letter is C;

and just now, when i restarted same thing happened. (i knew it would)
so i went to BIOS and as long as the 1.5TB is connected, i dont even SEE the SSD on the boot list. i see 3 options all the 1.5TB options and one for the dvd drive.

and again when i click on any of them to see if the SSD is on there, so i can make it number one, it doesnt even show up. i have to disconnect the external tb drive, restart machine, let it load into windows, and then plug the ext back in.

any ideas?

lol thanks in advace.

Interesting! Couple more things to do. First, have you set this system up to use the SATA Control Mode as AHCI. It's listed in the BIOS on the Integrated Peripheral Page.
Secondly, boot up to the desktop without the 1.5 TB HDD. Go to Disk Management. Then plug the removable HDD in. In the lower graphical area under the Volume Status column, it will be listed with a DriveLetter, like F or some other letter. Right click and remove the letter assignment. Then Assign it a separate letter that hasn't been used, like K. When done reboot and see if it still gets in the way.

 

[somdow]

Hello again.

nope

lol. i think we spoke in the ahci mode on another thread, about my ssd performance etc. so to answer your qustion YESSIR! its set as ahci.

i just restarted the pc after changing my drive letter to something never used ("M") and still hangs.

its annoying too cause u know, we all have our nice setups and to reach and pull the ext hdd to unplug, wait, then replug in...getting dull lol.

any other ideas?
ii never had this simple yet unique problem. wonder if its a windows thing...

 

[John_VanKirk]

Hello again.

nope

lol. i think we spoke in the ahci mode on another thread, about my ssd performance etc. so to answer your qustion YESSIR! its set as ahci.

i just restarted the pc after changing my drive letter to something never used ("M") and still hangs.

its annoying too cause u know, we all have our nice setups and to reach and pull the ext hdd to unplug, wait, then replug in...getting dull lol.

any other ideas?
ii never had this simple yet unique problem. wonder if its a windows thing...

Using AHCI, the BIOS doesn't assign an IDE emmulation port to your drive, it uses the actual port the SATA drive is plugged into. So your SSD should be plugged into SATA_0 on your MB, and this HDD should be plugged into say SATA_5. Usually you can very briefly see on your monitor just after the splash screen their connections, just before it shows 'AHCI installed'. Hit the pause key when that's on screen to review it for accuracy. May give you a hint.

When you boot up, then connect this HDD 'M' drive. In Disk Management, look at the Volume Status info of this 'M' drive. Does it list this drive as 'Active' when conncected, or does the 'Active' still show in the SSD drive Volume Status? Also do you have a lot of data stored on the 'M' removable drive? It may be necessary to use a cmd line utility to reset this drive.

 

[somdow]

hello there again.

ok so as far as the

" just after the splash screen their connections, just before it shows 'AHCI installed'. Hit the pause key when that's on screen to review it for accuracy. May give you a hint. "

it goes so fast that...there are 3 lines there but i almost always see the first 2 within like lol. a millisecond...its SUPER FAST!

i tried to restart 3xs to see if i could hit the PAUSE key on the 3rd option but to no avail.
itd always stop at option 2 or RIGHT AFTER the 3rd option went off screen and the transition between that screen and windows logon.

on the first 2 that i DID see, itd list "0 - ocz drive S.M.A.R.T (whatever this means) then " ok " "
and then " 1 - some other drive, then Smart again, then ok.

as far as seing whether my M external drive is ' ACTIVE ', its not.....

lol, any other ideas LOL

thanks in advace

 

[John_VanKirk]

hello there again.

ok so as far as the

" just after the splash screen their connections, just before it shows 'AHCI installed'. Hit the pause key when that's on screen to review it for accuracy. May give you a hint. "

it goes so fast that...there are 3 lines there but i almost always see the first 2 within like lol. a millisecond...its SUPER FAST!

i tried to restart 3xs to see if i could hit the PAUSE key on the 3rd option but to no avail.
itd always stop at option 2 or RIGHT AFTER the 3rd option went off screen and the transition between that screen and windows logon.

on the first 2 that i DID see, itd list "0 - ocz drive S.M.A.R.T (whatever this means) then " ok " "
and then " 1 - some other drive, then Smart again, then ok.

as far as seing whether my M external drive is ' ACTIVE ', its not.....

lol, any other ideas LOL

thanks in advace

Another fairly easy step you could do is to Copy all the data from this drive temporarily over to a separate HDD. Then reformat this drive to remove any disk setting that are interferring with which HDD is the Active one. Then when reformatted, you just Copy the data back and you're in business.

A more arcane method would be use a Cmd applet called DiskPart, where you would 'choose' this Disk, 'choose' the partition, and removing an Active attribute if there. Probably riskier than the first choice.

 

[somdow]

riskier in what way? i dont mind eother but, its 1tb....lol, alot of data on there

 

[John_VanKirk]

riskier in what way? i dont mind eother but, its 1tb....lol, alot of data on there

I reread all your posts, and you said the SSD is marked as 'Active', so you shouldn't have to reset that.

I think the safest road to take would be to copy all your "M" drive files to a temp drive location, then right click on the problem drive, and choose Delete Volume. That would remove the partition leaving you with Unallocated space, to Partition, then create a new NTFS file system. I realize it is a lot of data, but it doesn't take that long if you copy drive to drive.

You may find there is a problem in the external drive case PCB board or even in the drive itself, so it is safer to copy off your data now, rather than find later not only does the drive interfere with the BIOS recognition, but you can't get at your data. If you repartition and reformat the "M" drive and it still interferes with BIOS recognition, then you know it's the drive rather than software partitioning, and it's time to get a new drive.

When you plug in or un plug these external drives while your computer is running, especially if they get their power from the USB connector, or you havent used the "safe to remove the USB drive", there is always a slight chance of component damage.

 

[deadonthefloor]

riskier in what way? i dont mind eother but, its 1tb....lol, alot of data on there

What connection type are you using for the external?

The reason I ask is my pc won't boot with my Vantec USB/eSATA dock when connected via USB will hang my BIOS during drive detection, Then report my boot drive is missing.

Sounds kinda similar, but not enough to intrude on your thread.

I'm thinking maybe that your external drive is eSATA and that port is connected to the first SATA slot. Or maybe not.

 

[somdow]

What connection type are you using for the external?

The reason I ask is my pc won't boot with my Vantec USB/eSATA dock when connected via USB will hang my BIOS during drive detection, Then report my boot drive is missing.

Sounds kinda similar, but not enough to intrude on your thread.

I'm thinking maybe that your external drive is eSATA and that port is connected to the first SATA slot. Or maybe not.

just my usb 2.0 cable to usb of same type port in the back.

upon more testing it ONLY happens when i switch from IDE to AHCI mode.
heck sometimes windows doesnt even wanna load up.