Disk Boot Failure - But I can still boot?!

[Lethal Placebo]

Hello all, today I received a 500GB Samsung 850 Evo as a gift. I needed the space badly and went to install it on my computer, which already had a 120GB Samsung 840 Evo as the Windows Boot Disk and a 1TB HDD for storage. I moved the HDD from the SATA 3.0 port (my mobo is 6 years old at this point, so it only has two SATA 3.0 ports) to a regular port to make room for the new SSD. After that, I tried to boot, only to get DISK BOOT FAILURE, PLEASE INSERT SYSTEM DISK. I must have tried for around 90 minutes to get it back to normal, from unplugging the new SSD, to putting the drives back in their original configuration, to using my Windows 7 (I got the free upgrade) install disk. Suddenly, after asking for the System Disk yet again, I managed to get it to boot! I could be wrong, but it seems that the combination of:

1) "scanning" for a HDD in the SATA ports in the BIOS
2) using my Windows 7 to start cmd and using sfc/scannow

seems to allow me to boot, HOWEVER I must have my Windows 7 disk in the drive. I get the same DISK BOOT FAILURE message, but if I put in the Windows 7 disk it will then say "Press any key to boot from disk..." but then, instead of booting from the OS disk, it will boot my actual, installed Windows 10 drive. Everything seems to work, I assigned the new SSD a drive path, I can put on files on it, I scanned all three disks and nothing seems to be wrong. Does anyone know how I can fix this?

PC Specs:
Intel i7 Quad Core 930 Bloomfeld
EVGA X58 FTW3 Motherboard
6GB Kingston HyperX 1600MHz RAM
EVGA GeForce GTX 770 SC Graphics Card
120GB Samsung Evo 840 SSD (boot drive)
1TB Hitachi 7200RPM HDD
500GB Samsung Evo 850 SSD (new drive, only going to be used for storage)

 

[MPF-Dean]

Hey Lethal Placebo,

Which SSD do you want to be your primary boot disk?

Say its the new SSD; have it as the only disk connected to your system, boot up with windows 7 disk and see if you can delete the partition and set up a new one. Then try to install the disk on the SSD, wait until finished, then turn your PC off. Connect up the other SSD/HDDs/etc and try to boot. If this does not work, go into your bios and try to disable all boot options besides 1 and make that 1 your NEW SSD. Try to boot and if that works, you'll need to create your own boot order so that the SSD is picked up first.

Note: its usually a good idea to make your primary SSD/HDD/boot device plugged into SATA1 and so on rather than a random order.

If this does not work, let me know and I'll see what else I can find out for you.

- LE

 

[Lethal Placebo]

Hey Lethal Placebo,

Which SSD do you want to be your primary boot disk?

Say its the new SSD; have it as the only disk connected to your system, boot up with windows 7 disk and see if you can delete the partition and set up a new one. Then try to install the disk on the SSD, wait until finished, then turn your PC off. Connect up the other SSD/HDDs/etc and try to boot. If this does not work, go into your bios and try to disable all boot options besides 1 and make that 1 your NEW SSD. Try to boot and if that works, you'll need to create your own boot order so that the SSD is picked up first.

Note: its usually a good idea to make your primary SSD/HDD/boot device plugged into SATA1 and so on rather than a random order.

If this does not work, let me know and I'll see what else I can find out for you.

- LE

Thanks so much for you time! A question though: the SATA 3.0 ports on my motherboard do not allow me to plug the SSDs into the SATA 1 slot. The 3.0 ports are listed as 6/7. I assume I'd want to plug my SSD into these in order to maintain high speeds. Also, I'm not trying to move my OS to my new SSD. I want it to stay on the original SSD, but I keep running into the Disk Boot Failure problem.

 

[MPF-Dean]

No problem at all!

Yeah that's right, I would set your old HDD/SSD (primary boot device) as SATA1, Optical Drive SATA2, etc. Insert your new SSD into SATA 6 (3.0) and try to boot the system. Unfortunately if the boot sector or OS has any corruption or damage on your original SSD, I would boot up with the win7 disk and delete the partition and recreate a new one. If all this boots up then you should be fine. If not I would try setting SATA6 as primary boot (with your old SSD) and insert your new SSD into SATA7 to maintain the correct order. (Make sure if you can for the first boot, nothing is in SATA1 - SATA5 and only your old SSD in SATA6 and new SSD in SATA7).

Try these steps and let me know how you go

If they don't work we will work together to find a solution.

- LE

 

[Lethal Placebo]

No problem at all!

Yeah that's right, I would set your old HDD/SSD (primary boot device) as SATA1, Optical Drive SATA2, etc. Insert your new SSD into SATA 6 (3.0) and try to boot the system. Unfortunately if the boot sector or OS has any corruption or damage on your original SSD, I would boot up with the win7 disk and delete the partition and recreate a new one. If all this boots up then you should be fine. If not I would try setting SATA6 as primary boot (with your old SSD) and insert your new SSD into SATA7 to maintain the correct order. (Make sure if you can for the first boot, nothing is in SATA1 - SATA5 and only your old SSD in SATA6 and new SSD in SATA7).

Try these steps and let me know how you go

If they don't work we will work together to find a solution.

- LE

Sorry, had to go to bed last night! I tried rebuilding the partition using my Win7 disk, unfortunately it didn't work. Neither did the fixboot or the sfc commands. I also tried arranging the SATA cables as you said, still no change. Since I'm running Windows 10 now, I even went on a separate computer and created USB Windows 10 boot device to try and fix it and it still didn't work. I'm beginning to think that a fresh install of Windows 10 might be my best bet?

 

[MPF-Dean]

No worries!

Yeah in this case I would try now a fresh install of Windows 10 on that PC and forget about windows 7 (Remember to del the partition and recreate it). 1 thing to check (whether I have mention it before is), some BIOS have an option inside them to essentially "Boot Better" with Windows 10, so you may need to check and see if that option is set (which will cause issues when trying to install Win7). If it is, set it for Legacy boot and try that one last time. If that doesn't work then I am beginning to think your Win7 disk has a scratch or has some of its data corrupt. But a fresh Win10 install should do the trick unless your HDD is damaged.

Hope this helps!

- LE

 

[Lethal Placebo]

No worries!

Yeah in this case I would try now a fresh install of Windows 10 on that PC and forget about windows 7 (Remember to del the partition and recreate it). 1 thing to check (whether I have mention it before is), some BIOS have an option inside them to essentially "Boot Better" with Windows 10, so you may need to check and see if that option is set (which will cause issues when trying to install Win7). If it is, set it for Legacy boot and try that one last time. If that doesn't work then I am beginning to think your Win7 disk has a scratch or has some of its data corrupt. But a fresh Win10 install should do the trick unless your HDD is damaged.

Hope this helps!

- LE

Thanks for all your help! My BIOS didn't have any sort boot preference towards an OS. I decided to install Windows 10 to the new drive. I unplugged all drives except the 500GB SSD and it installed just fine. Then I reconnected and formatted the other drives. Now Windows is working fine again. Thanks again!

 

[MPF-Dean]

Aw sweet! Happy everything is working for you.