Windows 10: Why is a separate partition marked as active instead of the boot drive

I have two storage devices in my PC. One is a 128GB SSD which is used as the System disk (where I installed my OS) and the other is a 1 TB HDD which is used for keeping my usual files, docs, movies etc.

As I have mentioned, Windows 10 is installed in the SSD, I never installed any OS on my HDD. So, why is "E" marked as Active and contains boot files?







:)

 

Move Win7 64 image from a partition NTFS to a new drive

EDIT: After reading your first post again, is there any reason that you would now need GPT? Are you just trying to move the windows install to a new disk or is there a new motherboard involved?

If you are already booting to an NTFS partition, then it makes me wonder if after copying to the new drive, the partition isn't getting marked as Active.

Following the same steps I posted above for startup repair, you can get to a command prompt and use diskpart to see if this is the case.

Code: In the command prompt: diskpart list disk select disk 0 (disk number may be different if you have other disks connected.) list partition select partition 0 (partition number number may vary, but you want to see the boot partition which is the same as your windows partition according to the screenshot on the OP) detail partition (This should have Active: Yes or No. If it says no, since we have the partition selected, you can just use the following command in diskpart) active[/quote]

 

unmark a partition as "active"

After changing to active partition my computer doesn't boot so what can I do now?

 

unmark a partition as "active"

Hello Bob,

Thank you for posting your concern in Microsoft Community and welcome to the Windows 10 Family.

Please be informed that marking a partition as active on a basic disk means that the computer will use the loader (an operating system tool) on that partition to start the operating system. An active partition is a partition on a hard drive set as the bootable
partition that contains the operating system. So it is not advisable to configure anything related to boot partition.

Please follow the below steps to unmark the partition as active:

• 
  Open command prompt by pressing Windows key + X and selecting “Command prompt admin”.
  
• 
  Type in diskpart and press Enter.
  
• To identify which disk you need to work with. Type the command: list disk.
  
  This will list all the drives connected to your computer.
• 
  To select the disk enter the command: select disk n
  
  "n" will correspond to the disk # for the ssd you are referring to.
  
• 
  To list all the partitions on the disk enter the command:
  list partition
  
• 
  To select a partition use: select partition n
  
  Substitute "n" correctly and it will select the particular partitions on that drive.
  
• 
  To unmark the current partition as active use the command line:
  inactive
  
• 
  Exit the command prompt using command:
  exit
  
• 
  Reboot the system to let the changes happen.
  

Hope the above information is helpful. If you need further assistance, we would be happy to help you.

Thank you.