boot from second hard drive

[Ranger22]

I'm attempting to boot from second hard drive. I cloned my hard drive to a second hard drive as a back up and a second boot up device. I have a Dell Optiplex 780 64 bit machine running Windows 10. I have not been able to instruct the bios to boot from second hard drive. I tried disconnecting the SATA cable from the SATA 0 port, but nothing in bios to point to SATA 1 port (where the second drive is located). On normal boot, it works correctly as a D: drive, but can't get to it to boot up. I have not tried unpluging the SATA 0 cable and connecting it to the second drive. Too nervous. Any one know how to achieve this? Thanks.

 

[SuperSoph_WD]

Welcome to the TH Community, @Ranger22!

I'd advise you go into Disk Management in Windows and check how your secondary HDD is recognized there. Having two identical Windows installation on both internal drives is not really a backup solution. You would be much better off creating a system image on an external or some other off-site device. Keeping your backups on an internal storage inside the PC is not a good backup solution.
However, if you wish to boot from the secondary drive, you should check if it has the same partitions as your booting/primary drive. It could be missing some important system file that prevents your system from booting. You could try fixing the issue by leaving your primary drive unplugged and running the Advanced Startup Repair options from the Windows installation media on the secondary HDD.

Hope it works. Best of luck!
SuperSoph_WD

 

[dankcik09]

Doesnt it need a boot partition? Might need to stick the repair disk in, your win 10, and let it create a boot partition on ur 2nd drive. I'd also unplug your primary drive, 1st drive, to avoid any confusion.

 

[Ranger22]

SuperSoph_WD and dankcik09
Thanks for the help. Here's what I did after reading your advice. I created a bootable CD. Then I unplugged the second drive and plugged the boot SATA [0] cable into it. The drive booted with the sequence advising there was nothing plugged into the SATA[1] port. "Hit F1 to continue." I hit "F1" and it was off to the races. Thanks again.