Bootmgr ia missing when I plug in another hdd

[Olosen113]

Hello! I have a 80gb working IDE WD and installed win 7 x64, works fine, but when I plug in a sata seagate hdd with 500gb(from a friend, it has files on it) it fails to boot, and by that I mean that it takes a long time to show the hdds on the firsr screen after I turn on, and after that it gives me bootmgr is missing press ctrl alt del to restart but it wont restart if I do that. Please help. Also I have a gigabyte ga-g31m-es2l mobo.

 

[SuperSoph_WD]

Welcome to Tom's Hardware, @Olosen113!

It sounds like there could be some sort of an OS confusion, whenever you connect the secondary 500 GB HDD especially if it contains an OS installation from a previous system. What happens when you boot into your primary WD HDD without having the secondary drive connected? Is the issue still present?
If it's only happening when connecting the secondary drive, I'd advise you try using an external enclosure (with an AC adapter) or a docking station to connect that particular HDD externally without it interfering with your system's boot. Once you have it successfully connected to the PC, you should be able to see it in Disk management in Windows. From where you should be able to reformat it and wipe the HDD clean in order to get rid of the old files.

Another alternative would be to plug it in the system and try booting into the Advanced StartUp Repair Options from your Windows 7 installation media. It would allow you to fix the MBR (Master Boot record) and hopefully get rid of the 'Bootmgr is missing' error.

Hope this helps you. Let me know how it goes.
SuperSoph_WD

 

[Olosen113]

By only having the WD I have no issuess, and the 500gb one has only some movies and games on it, but no OS, also the windows was installed on the 80gb one while the hdd was put on slave position, i moved it to master only after completly installed windows, also, I have the System reserved partition on the 80gb hdd.

 

[SuperSoph_WD]

Hey there again, @Olosen113!

If you had both drives connected to the system while clean installing the OS onto the 80 GB WD HDD, you could have encountered an OS confusion that basically causes the system files while installing them to get scattered across all the SATA drives connected. That's why it's essential to have all secondary data drives disconnected while installing Windows. Either way, the StartUp Repair options should fix the issue by repairing the MBR.
Afterwards, check how the system boots with both drives connected. It would be helpful if you post a screenshot of your Disk Management in Windows, though. The secondary HDD should be shown there as a volume containing some of the essential system/boot files, which is most probably why you would be getting the booting error.

Good luck!
SuperSoph_WD

 

[Olosen113]

I fixed it! The problem was the boot order, my bios was picking up the sata hdd as 1st boot, it was detecting it as master. Now after chaging the boot order It sees the 80gb as channel 0 master and the 500gb one as channnel 2 slave.

 

[SuperSoph_WD]

I'm truly glad to hear this, @Olosen113!
Awesome job with the troubleshooting, really!
My last recommendation would be to always remember to back up your files on at least two different storage locations (on-site as well as off-site) to avoid the potential data loss. Moving data from your system drive to an external hard drive is not a backup, unless there is already a duplicate of the file on a different drive!

Hope it helps you! Best of luck!
Cheers,
SuperSoph_WD