How to remove secondary hdd from win 7 Pro computer without getting \

jagraham

May 11, 2012 10:15:59 PM

I have a windows 7 Pro OS running which was loaded with one HDD attached. Windows was running fine. I installed a secondary HDD to allow some backup; it was able to be installed, fully formated and was healthy. I tried to backup but was told by windows it was not large enough so I uninstalled by accessing device manager from inside computer management and clicking uninstall and confirming device removal. There was then, no visible indication that the secondary drive was installed. I shut down and physically removed the secondary drive and tried to reboot but all I could get was "A disk read error occurred. Press Ctrl+Alt+Del to restart". So I reconnected the drive and it boots fine. My question is, what do I need to do to be able to disconnect the secondary drive without getting that error?

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foscooter

May 11, 2012 10:25:02 PM

I think you uninstalled the wrong drive.

I've never done that thru Device Manager, I just pull the drive.

I have uninstalled the controller drivers before.

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mbreslin1954

May 11, 2012 10:31:27 PM

I've experienced this behavior with two drives installed when installing Windows. It typically puts some boot files on the second drive, and when you later remove it, the system won't boot. I don't know how this happened to you if the 2nd drive was not present when Windows was installed. Either use the Windows Repair utility or run EasyBCD.

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jagraham

May 11, 2012 10:35:56 PM

foscooter said:

I think you uninstalled the wrong drive.

I've never done that thru Device Manager, I just pull the drive.

I have uninstalled the controller drivers before.

Thanks for your reply but No, I didn't uninstall the wrong drive. I checked closely the ID numbers and the sizes of the drives before I uninstalled and also checked the drive that was removed in the BIOS while trying to power up; the very small drive was not included in the BIOS readout. Still could not get passed the error. "A disk read error occurred. Press Ctrl+Alt+Del to restart.

Anyone else have this problem?

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jagraham

May 11, 2012 10:40:02 PM

mbreslin1954 said:

I've experienced this behavior with two drives installed when installing Windows. It typically puts some boot files on the second drive, and when you later remove it, the system won't boot. I don't know how this happened to you if the 2nd drive was not present when Windows was installed. Either use the Windows Repair utility or run EasyBCD.

Thanks for your reply: I'll try your advice.

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