Boot Device Error

[rahnz11]

Hi there

I installed a WD 1TB Blue Edition 3.5" SATA3 Internal HDD as a second hard drive in my PC (Windows 7).

I formatted and partitioned it and it worked fine.

But when I restarted my computer a few days later, I received a "Reboot and select proper boot device" error.

I went into BIOS and made sure the boot devices were in the correct order (with Windows Boot Manager as first). They were. I also tried disabling every boot device except WIndows Boot Manager. I kept getting the error though.

My power supply is 400W which I think is adequate. I have also tried removing the drive and re-installing, but keep getting the same error.

Any ideas appreciated.

Thanks

 

[SuperSoph_WD]

Welcome to the community, rahnz11!

Sorry to hear about your booting issues! You mentioned that you installed the WD Blue as a secondary HDD, this means that there is no OS or boot partition on it. What is your primary booting drive? I'd recommend you to try resolving your boot issue by running the Repair options from the Windows Installation media.

I'd also suggest you check the connections to your SATA drives and make sure that everything is mounted properly inside the PC rig.

Keep me posted. Hope this helps.
SuperSoph_WD

 

[rahnz11]

Hi SuperSoph

Thanks for your reply. I should have said that my primary HDD is another WD drive, with a Windows Boot Manager partition on it. That is the drive specified in BIOs as the first boot source.

I went through the steps for Repairing the boot drive record as you suggested, but the same problem occurs.

I can hot plug in the secondary drive after booting Windows, and it shows up fine, but when I resart the same problem occurs!

I wonder if Windows is confused as to which drive the Windows Boot Manager is on? Is there any way of specifying that in BIOS?

Thanks for your help

 

[SuperSoph_WD]

Hey there again, rahnz11!

Indeed, if you had both WD HDDs plugged to the SATA ports when you were installing Windows on the primary one, the OS is definitely confused. This is a rather common issue and it occurs when there is more than one storage drive connected to the motherboard at the time of the Windows install. What happens is that Windows scatters the system files randomly across all the SATA HDDs connected which results in a lot of booting issues much like the ones you're facing at the moment.

The best way to fix this is to reinstall Windows with the secondary WD Blue unplugged from the SATA ports! Once you have the OS up and running on the primary WD drive, you can simply reconnect the data HDD and reformat it through Disk Management in order to be sure that there are no OS files on it that might affect the system's performance again.

Before proceeding with this, make sure you have all your important files backed up to an external HDD or some other storage device off-site. Having, at least, two copies of your data stored in different locations is the surest way to prevent any potential data loss.

Good luck! Keep me posted if you have more questions!
SuperSoph_WD