Problem when old and new HDDs installed!

[terdferguson]

Ok everybody, I posted something along the same lines a few days ago, but I don't think I explained the situation clearly.

I bought a new internal hdd to replace the one the is currently in my pc.

I wanted to install this hdd and then just clone the old drive onto it.

Simple enough right?

Here is where I'm stuck.
I have both the old and new hard drives installed in my pc. Both are plugged into the appropriate SATA ports on the motherboard. No problem there.
However, when I try and reboot the computer with both the old and new drive connected I get thrown to a message to Insert bootable media and reboot...

Ok, I know what y'all are going to say. "Go to BIOS..."

My BIOS is configured correctly for all I can tell. The boot order is still my optical drive first and then my OLD hard drive. The new hard drive is not even on the list for boot order, but it does show up as connected.

Why won't the PC boot from my old hard drive when both are connected? Why is it being bypassed? Is it possibly a power supply issue? I'm at a loss and I feel like this should be a fairly simple procedure.

Any brainstorms, experience, black magic would be greatly appreciated.

 

[Paperdoc]

Any chance that you installed the new drive and connected it to the SATA port that WAS being used for your old drive? Then plugged the old drive into a different SATA port?

Odd question but for a reason. When you set up your BIOS Boot Priority Sequence it offers you various devices to choose, named quite clearly. But what it does not tell you is that it really is asking which SATA port do you want to boot from. If you tell it to boot first from the optical drive on the SATA0 port, and then from the HDD on SATA1, what it actually remembers is Port SATA0 first, then port SATA1, but it will display names according to the actual device names. Now, if you later change which port the device is plugged into, it still tries to boot from SATA0, then SATA1. SO, if you changed and put the new drive on the SATA1 port that WAS for your bootable old drive, it's trying to boot from that port (and the new HDD) that has no OS to find!

Try disconnecting your new drive, but do not change the connection to the old drive. Then boot into BIOS Setup and set your Boot Sequence so it works with just the old HDD and optical unit. Then shut down and reconnect the new drive and reboot. This time it should boot from the old drive, because it's still on the port you last set. Also make sure the optical drive is empty so that it WILL skip that device and go to a HDD.