Automatic Boot Path Designation across multiple HDDs?!?!

[GTaero40]

Hello all,

I'm very confused currently. I have a problem that I've never seen the likes of before. Long story short, I have a 1TB HDD and a 40GB HDD. I don't know why I installed the 40GB one, but it's in there, so whatever. The 1TB is the newer and more reliable HDD, and as I couldn't figure out why the 40GB was in there, I decided to take it out. After doing this, I turned on the computer (1TB HDD plugged in, running on SATA1 port) and the computer told me that there wasn't a bootable disk. Confused, I plugged the 40GB back in, and unplugged the 1TB. The system booted to the Windows 10 recovery screen. wtf?! I plugged them both back in. In Windows 10, when booted, the OS only recognizes the 1TB unless I use a partition managing program, which shows a 100MB System reserved partition on the 40GB. There is also a 450MB NTFS System reserve on the 1TB. Contradictory to this, in the BIOS, the system only recognizes the 40GB HDD. I'm immensely baffled. I want to remove the 40GB and only be running off the 1TB, but i'm unsure on what to do to achieve this. I have no idea why the system would require both HDDs to boot, but not recognize one of them. Also, when I installed the OS on the machine, I only had the 1TB Installed. I added on the 40 later on, not sure why. Also note that RAID is disabled for everything. Any answers would be much appreciated.

Thanks!

 

[ArtPog]

1. You're absolutely certain that when you installed Win 10 on the 1 TB HDD, that drive was the ONLY drive installed in the system at that time?

2. Was this a fresh-install of the Win 10 OS or were you upgrading a previous OS?

3. Presumably after this install the system booted & functioned without any problems with ONLY the 1 TB boot drive installed?

4. So you "later" installed a 40 GB HDD to the system. For what purpose?

5. And after doing so, you ran into the problem you described?

6. Any idea why there's a "System Reserved" partition on that 40 GB disk? What other type of data does that drive contain?

7. You haven't utilized (now or previously) any third-party partition management type of program to manipulate in any way the partitions on your drives, have you?

 

[GTaero40]

1. You're absolutely certain that when you installed Win 10 on the 1 TB HDD, that drive was the ONLY drive installed in the system at that time?

2. Was this a fresh-install of the Win 10 OS or were you upgrading a previous OS?

3. Presumably after this install the system booted & functioned without any problems with ONLY the 1 TB boot drive installed?

4. So you "later" installed a 40 GB HDD to the system. For what purpose?

5. And after doing so, you ran into the problem you described?

6. Any idea why there's a "System Reserved" partition on that 40 GB disk? What other type of data does that drive contain?

7. You haven't utilized (now or previously) any third-party partition management type of program to manipulate in any way the partitions on your drives, have you?

In reply to your questions,
1. Yes. I am absolutely certain that the 1TB was the only installed drive when I installed Win 10.
2. Yes, it was a fresh copy of win 10, not an upgrade.
3. Yes, I used the PC for a while with only the 1TB installed. Actually, I recall what I did. Originally, I had win 7 installed. I then needed to upgrade to 10 but I wanted to preserve some games, so I think I used the 40GB to transfer data to. I then upgraded using to windows 10, and made sure that it was only isntalling to the 1TB.
4. Described above
5. Yes
6. No. The rest is blank on the disk, only the system reserved is there. I didn't end up using the 40GB for game data, but forgot to remove it when I installed Windows 10.
7. No, I haven't tried to modify the existing partitions on any drive. All I have used the 3rd party software for was to view the existing drives and their partitions, as Windows doesn't recognize the 40GB.

 

[ArtPog]

Note your response to item 3. above...

You're now indicating that you again "upgraded" the 1 TB HDD to Win 10 following transfer of data from a 40 GB drive. No doubt the 40 GB HDD was connected in the system at the time of this "upgrade" to Win 10. Why you did that is a puzzle. That's probably the root of your problem. It probably accounts for the fact that the System Reserved partition resides on that 40 GB HDD and needs to be accessed by Windows in order to boot the system.

You have a number of alternatives...
1. You could simply live with the present situation of having the 40 GB HDD connected in your system as long as it contains the System Reserved partition.

2. You could shrink the partition on your 1 TB HDD so as to create a 100 MB (that's MB, not GB) partition. Then use a disk-cloning program such as Macrium Reflect to clone the System Reserved partition on the 40 GB drive to the unallocated 100 MB disk-space that you created on the 1 TB HDD. Ensure that the SR partition on the 1 TB is marked Active in Disk Management.
NOTE: There's no guarantee this will work. Sometimes it does; othertimes it doesn't.
If you then uninstall the 40 GB HDD from the system and the system boots with only the 1 TB HDD installed, then all is well.

3. You can try the following...
Open a command prompt (Elevated Command Prompt) with administrator privileges: C:\Windows\System32>
Type: bcdboot c:\windows /s c: <Enter>
You should get a message: "Boot files successfully created."
Open Disk Management, locate the C:\ partition, right-click and select the option “Mark Partition as Active” from the sub:menu; click Yes to the confirmation message.

4. You could simply fresh-install the Win 10 program on your 1 TB drive with the understanding that you will need to reinstall all your programs and other data following this fresh-install.

In case you decide to try any of the above processes I would strongly advise you to clone the contents of the 1 TB HDD to another drive BEFORE you undertake any of them so that you will have a fall-back position in the event of problems.

 

[GTaero40]

Note your response to item 3. above...

You're now indicating that you again "upgraded" the 1 TB HDD to Win 10 following transfer of data from a 40 GB drive. No doubt the 40 GB HDD was connected in the system at the time of this "upgrade" to Win 10. Why you did that is a puzzle. That's probably the root of your problem. It probably accounts for the fact that the System Reserved partition resides on that 40 GB HDD and needs to be accessed by Windows in order to boot the system.

You have a number of alternatives...
1. You could simply live with the present situation of having the 40 GB HDD connected in your system as long as it contains the System Reserved partition.

2. You could shrink the partition on your 1 TB HDD so as to create a 100 MB (that's MB, not GB) partition. Then use a disk-cloning program such as Macrium Reflect to clone the System Reserved partition on the 40 GB drive to the unallocated 100 MB disk-space that you created on the 1 TB HDD. Ensure that the SR partition on the 1 TB is marked Active in Disk Management.
NOTE: There's no guarantee this will work. Sometimes it does; othertimes it doesn't.
If you then uninstall the 40 GB HDD from the system and the system boots with only the 1 TB HDD installed, then all is well.

3. You can try the following...
Open a command prompt (Elevated Command Prompt) with administrator privileges: C:\Windows\System32>
Type: bcdboot c:\windows /s c: <Enter>
You should get a message: "Boot files successfully created."
Open Disk Management, locate the C:\ partition, right-click and select the option “Mark Partition as Active” from the sub:menu; click Yes to the confirmation message.

4. You could simply fresh-install the Win 10 program on your 1 TB drive with the understanding that you will need to reinstall all your programs and other data following this fresh-install.

In case you decide to try any of the above processes I would strongly advise you to clone the contents of the 1 TB HDD to another drive BEFORE you undertake any of them so that you will have a fall-back position in the event of problems.

Yea, I don't know why I had the 40GB installed when I installed Windows 10. Bit of a "full retard" moment. Anyhow, thanks so much for your answers, I'll definitely try them out and get back to you if any work.

Thanks again!