Windows 10: Replaced HDD, now Windows won't start

Wasn't sure where to post this, but this seemed like the right subforum for this since its installation/restore related.

A few weeks ago I was able to get a good deal on a new SSD to replace my old one. I chose to combine this with a fresh install since I was still on Windows 7 with a license I got from school, I quit school 6 years ago so bought a new Windows 10 key for the install.

Took the old SSD out and the new one in. I left my 2 HDD's plugged in aswell, big mistake. I installed Windows 10 and everything was fine appart from it constantly wanting to start the setup over again. I solved that and continued with the installation of drivers and software.

By coincidence my 2TB HDD started ticking and rattling shortly after the install. So I ordered a replacement drive with same capacity. I hooked up the new drive and started copying all the data from the old drive to the new one.

When that was done I shut down the computer, disconnected the old drive and on booting the pc again I was greeted by "Reboot and select proper boot device". No matter what I tried or what settings I edited in the BIOS/UEFI/whateveritscallednowadays, the pc wouldn't boot.

Untill the next day, when I decided to hookup the old, ticking and rattling HDD again. Booted fine, tested it again by shutting it down, disconnecting the drive and seeing it not wanting to boot.

Now, Windows' Disk Management shows the 2TB drive (which has never contained anything else but music, downloads, documents, photo's etc.) as 'System, Active, Primary Partition'. The new SSD with the actual Windows folders and all on it shows 'Boot, Pagefile, Crashdump, Primary Partition.

So apparently during installing Windows 10, it left something on the HDD even though I told Windows Setup to install on the SSD.

I tried disconnecting every drive except the SSD and run startup repair from the Windows 10 setup, but that just said 'Nope sorry, can't fix it'

Setup is as follows
Samsung 850 EVO 250GB (used to be Crucial M4 128GB) with Windows 10 Professional 64-bit, language: Dutch
Samsung Spinpoint F3 500GB (used for installing games to prevent the SSD from filling up to quickly)
Western Digital Black 2TB (used to be Samsung Spinpoint F4 2TB) contains downloads, music, the My Documents folder etc.)

Any idea's would be great, I'm no fan of reinstall Windows again now that I just got everything up and running again.

:)

 

Display issues

Didn't help

 

Display issues

Has anyone ever encountered such a problem?

The windows become small and the text is smeared each other..





***Post moved by the moderator to the appropriate forum category.***

 

Startup repair will not work because the ssd is not marked Active.

Post a shot of Disk Management and we`ll go from there.

 

Install EasyBCD:
EasyBCD - NeoSmart Technologies

Change the boot partition to your C: drive partition:
Changing the Boot Partition

Reconfigure the BIOS, if required, to boot from the SSD, rather than the old HDD.

 

Well, I was starting this topic from work, and I went of of a screenshot of Disk Management I made earlier for use on a Dutch forum. On the screenshot the SSD wasn't shown as Active, but now that I double check, it does.

Here's a screenshot of Disk Management where for some reason the SSD doesn't show up as active. My OS is in Dutch though, so not sure if it helps any

In this shot, the C:\ drive is the SSD, S:\ drive is the old 2TB harddrive, D:\ is the Program Files drive and E:\ is the new Western Digital unit.



And while whe're at it, a shot from Minitool Partition Wizard.

 

Post #3 will fix it.

One thing that is confusing are the labels "boot" and "system" that Windows disk management and MiniTool assign to the partitions. The "system" partition is the partition the computer actually loaded the initial boot files from. The "boot" partition is the partition that those boot files pointed to to load the OS from. Those two labels also only indicate what the computer actually did the last it booted, they do not describe the capabilities of the partitions. You may have a partition that has all the boot files in it, and also marked as active, which the computer is capable of booting from, but it won't get the "system" label unless the computer actually did boot from it.

Post #2 will put the boot files onto the same partition on the SSD containing your Windows installation and make it capable of booting the computer from. Also, the "active" flag only indicates to the BIOS which partition on the drive it is supposed to look to for boot files. You can have 1 active partition on each physical drive (MBR partition type drives get active partitions, GPT type drives do not get active partitions, they get EFI System partitions instead). Then you have to set in BIOS the order of the drives it is going to look for first for "active" partitions, and then to see if there are boot files in the "active" partition.

 

Just to be clear, Windows has been installed on the SSD. All the folders are there. Other then the labels on the S:\ drive, there's nothing to indicate there is anything OS related on the disk.

When I first encountered this issue, I disabeled all boot devices in the BIOS except the dvd-drive and the SSD. Still, it only wants to boot when that old 2TB Samsung is connected.

I'll look into your previous post tonight when I get home.

 

You have to mark the ssd Active and write the system files to it. These Tutorials will work the same for Windows 10.

Partition - Mark as Active - Windows 7 Help Forums

Startup Repair - Windows 7 Help Forums

Example: Disk Management and how it will look in Partition Wizard once you fix it.

Both examples show the Active partition with the system files.

 

Windows startup repair won't work in this case. Windows startup repair will only fix boot files that are already existing on an active partition. The OP has no boot files yet on his Windows partition on the SSD. The fix in post #3 will create the boot files on his Windows partition on the SSD.

 

I made an error in my previous post. The fix is in Post #3, not #2.

 

@NavyLCDR EasyBCD worked! Thank you!

Now it appears the Spinpoint F3 unit is also making noise, damnit. Might need to take a look at that one aswell *Sad

Couldn't it be Windows 10 related? How does it handle HDD's? It started as soon as I booted into Windows 10 for the first time...

 

I've never heard of Windows 10 causing a hard drive to physically fail, but the other common component you might want to look at is the Power Supply Unit (PSU) for the computer. Especially if the problem hard drives are connected in daisy chain to the same cable from the PSU.

 

The powersupply is a Coolermaster V700, 700Watts, I made sure the HDD's and SSD have a single 12v line coming from the unit. The unit is 3,5 years old now.

And I'm not talking about physical damage. But I know that Windows tries to save on power consumption by shutting down HDD's when they are not in use. Thats the first thing I shut down because constantly shutting down and starting up of HDD's wears them down. But I thought since Windows 10 is still a bit schizofrenic with old menu's mixed in with the new I thought maybe I've missed something.

Or it was just time to go for both drives, the Spinpoint F3 is even older then the F4 unit.

 

You can use Crystal Disk Info(and a ton of other apps) to read the hard drive S.M.A.R.T. status:
Download Center - Crystal Dew World

Typically, hard drive clicking is caused by the read/write head not having enough power to come fully out of the park position which can be caused by both lack of external power supplied to the drive or by internal failure.