Windows 10: Reconnected HDD won't boot but it should

Details: ASUS M11AA desktop UEFI

Running Win10 on an HDD, I disconnected the sata cable to it and tested out an SSD on a diff sata cable. Installed 10 on that just for fun.

Took the SSD out, reconnected the HDD sata cable and it wont boot. The HDD is seen in the bios but in the boot menu it is not seen. I see items such as UEFI: Sandisk(my acronis usb stick), UEFI: P3 DVDRW, UEFI: Kingston(my win10 install usb stick), Windows Boot Manager but not UEFI: P2: Toshiba which im pretty sure is what my HDD was.

Windows Boot Manager goes to UEFI setup.

Any clues before I try Win10 repair from the Kingston stick?

:)

 

How to install Windows 10 to an SSD?

1. I have installed an SSD on my pc. When I open the pc, the following message shows: Reboot and select proper boot device or Insert boot media device and press a key. Is it normal not to see the HDD?

2. If I disconnect the HDD and install Windows 10 from a stick, and reconnect the HDD, shall I be able to see it too?

 

Controlling BOOT drive after installing SSD with second HDD still onboard

I installed a Samsung 850EVO SSD on a Lenovo H50 desktop with WIN10, 1TB WD HDD, 12g Ram, 2g Nvdia gpu.

After a lot of learning about WIN not allowing HDD to be mirrored fully - no Boot. I disconnected HDD, booted from flash drive, reinstalled WIN10 on SSD and it became the boot drive. Upon reconnecting my HDD, it wants to take over as boot drive again.

I repeated the above. Wiped the HDD. Though disc restore repartitioned drive to original condition, it is for now, the data D: drive with primary and recover partitions, but not the Boot.

Is there a way to ensure it my SSD C: on Target 0 remains boot?

Thanks,

Jeff

 

Hello FrostyWinnipeg Welcome to the Ten Forums!

If you are keeping the two flash drives plugged in try unplugging both to start or the San Disk in order to boot live from the Kingston. Instead of the Upgrade to Repair or slapping on another clean install you will first want to try a few things out like the Repair Startup tool and going to the Command prompt option run the DiskPart tool in order to have that list the drives with the List Disk command. Once you ID the correct drive and select that type in "active" to see the primary made bootable.

The other thing you may end up doing is double checking the data cable you unplugged to be sure that is all the way in at both ended and didn't jar loose at the board end by chance. You have need a can of compressed air to blast out any dust or debris that could have got lodged in as well.

 

Well I changed CSM option in the bios from AUTO to ENABLED and that worked. Not sure why but whatever.

 

When putting the SSD did you make any change in setting at the time? That would explain why you are seeing immediate results when just going in now to make that change. At least you had a quick fix seen there! *Wink

 

No changes, a real stumper.

 

I've had a few incidents? at times when dual booting OSs and changing boot orders as well as rearranging cables between drives where one time nothing would start and then next time you suddenly saw things running normally again. On one occasion I even had the host drive's cable plugged into one of the storage drives until deciding to mark numbers on each one to show which port it was going to. Your change of setting apparently made the bios search for Legacy not UEFI.

 

Well once again it happened. Pretty much same thing although when i changed CSM to Enabled from Auto nothing happened. Reset it to Auto and dug out the Win10 DVD and booted to that. Restarted at the first window where u select country and rebooted. A new item showed up in Boot Menu...Windows Boot Manager : (P1 Toshiba) and this got me into Windows.

Now the drive is UEFI why it shows up as P1 which would indicate legacy I dunno. Another solved/unsolved. Hopes it helps others.