Alienware 17 with 2 bootable drives, won't boot from either?

[Jon2001]

I have an Alienware 17 about 4 months old, with a 750g hd and 64g msata.

If I have 2 bootable hd installed in the system it refuses to boot from either. I get an error message at boot saying that both drives have errors (which it can't fix). Doesn't matter what drive order is set in the bios.

Both drives boot fine if they are the sole drive on the system!
Both have the same version of w8 (not 8.1) on them.
One I've used for about 8 months, the other is new and came with the AW 17 (I had a major problem with another AW 17 and Dell let me keep the hd out of it to put in the new machine which is the same model so I wouldn't have to reinstall everything I use for an 8th time!).
I've the latest bios installed.


I'm thinking of reinstalling W8 on the msata, but I'm worried that once it's installed and the bios sees 2 bootable drives again it won't allow either to boot! And I don't want to have to spend time striping the thing down to take the msata out afterwards just to get the system running again.


Can one suggest why it won't boot with 2 bootable drives?

 

[BadAsAl]

Check your BIOS, I know mine has settings that set it up specifically for Windows 8, I think it enables hybrid boot? I know I had issues with multiple OS drives and I ended up having to take them all out and only having the 1 drive in when I installed Windows 8. I set the BIOS for "other OS" before installing. Once Windows 8 was booting and happy I could put my other drives in and whenever I need Windows 7 or Ubuntu I just hit F12 to pull up the boot menu and pick whichever I want. If I do nothing Windows 8 boots.

Of course this was done with a desktop so not as challenging as a laptop.

 

[Jon2001]

I've tried just about all the bios settings. I don't have a option for hybrid boot (that I can find).

I really don't want to mess this up, the msata is under the keyboard (thanks, Dell!) and takes a full strip down it get it out. So I don't want it make it a boot drive if there's going to be any doubt about it not booting when I'm done.

 

[BadAsAl]

Just so I understand, what is the reason you want 2 bootable Windows 8.1 drives?

 

[Jon2001]

For safety.
Dell didn't/don't supply DVD (or any kind of backup media) for Windows. Both drives have the recovery partition on them. If a drive fails I don't have to worry about finding an Alienware version of W8 anywhere, it's on both drives, but both have to be bootable into Windows to make use of it...

I plan to use the almost empty drive for data and old drive for the system. But I was really thinking of installing W8 on the msata, but if I make that bootable and then the system won't boot I'm lost for a day while I either find a work round or strip out the msata...

 

[BadAsAl]

I am not sure what it is that is stopping you from booting to either drive when they are both in the system. As I said in my earlier post, I experienced something similar and while I got it working, I still don't truly understand why. I just think with Windows 8 being so tied into the BIOS that somehow it gets confused when you have both drives in.

So I am a bit confused on what drives you have... I know you said a 750GB HDD and a 64GB SDD, but then you mentioned old and new. So do you have another drive as well or just these 2?

 

[Jon2001]

Hi and sorry to confuse things.

I have 2 750 g drives. The one that came with the new AW and the one from the old one.

The first thing I did was put the old one in the new AW (with the drive that was already there) and the system wouldn't boot (which is how I found out there was a problem).
Either alone boot fine, together, nothing.

What I'd like to do it to make the msata the boot drive, but that's a major pain to strip out. So my worry is if I go back to having 2 bootable drives (the 750g and the msata) the system will refuse to boot from either as it did with then the 2 750g drives were in.

 

[BadAsAl]

Ok, I understand your situation better now.
So you plan to clone the 750 to the mSATA?

 

[Jon2001]

Yeah, that's the plan (or try a direct install onto the msata, but I understand that can be prone to even more problems).

So, do a clean install of W8 onto the old hd, clone that to the msata, use the old drive as the data drive. But there'll be a point when the system first reboots after cloning the hd to the msata where they'll be 2 boot drives. That's the part I have concerns about. If the system won't boot with 2 boot drives I have to remove the msata, which is hours of work...

 

[BadAsAl]

Are you planning on installing any programs to the mSATA or are you going to put them on the data drive?
Does your BIOS allow you to disable any of your SATA ports?

 

[cj100570]

The reason it won't boot is because your boot-loader tries to load both and runs into an error. Typically multi-boot systems have both OS' on the same drive and you choose the one you want to boot into when you start your PC. Have a look at this, http://www.howtogeek.com/214477/how-to-dual-boot-two-or-more-versions-of-windows/, for a possible fix if you haven't found 1 already.