Mrky

Prominent
Jul 20, 2020
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So, today I've noticed that my E partition is missing. OK that is odd. Removed the hard drive and noticed that it is not working. My older drive is working, I can hear it clearly, but this one seemed stuck. So I've opened I, managed to release the needle,, handle or how the hell its called. Connected it and I am hearing that it is now working. But, voila, second problem appears. Now when I want to start the computer, I get this message.

Reboot and Select proper Boot device or Insert Boot Media in selected Boot device and press a key.

I've tried to replace the CMOS battery, tried different SATA cable, tried to change my Bios settings and boot priority, but nothing works. And that is strange to me because my Windows is installed on the other hard drive, the working one not on to the faulty one. I think.
So, does anyone have a solution?
 

kenzimarcel

Commendable
Feb 13, 2018
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opening up your hard drive is not that deep, it will likely still work, but you have reduced the life span, and you will end up with bad sectors if you have managed to scratch the platters. is the drive visible in the bios as a boot option or in the hdd order? try burn yourself a windows or linux live cd/usb and take a look at your drives. if its not seen by your bios or os, the drive may be dead. if windows is on the other drive, go into a live os and see if the boot partition is on there, usually a 500mb partition at the start. however, its very rare for the boot partition to be on another drive.
 

USAFRet

Titan
Moderator
My older drive is working, I can hear it clearly, but this one seemed stuck. So I've opened I, managed to release the needle,, handle or how the hell its called.
So you opened it to expose the platters and R/W arm?
Well, it was mostly dead before.
Now, it is completely dead.


So, does anyone have a solution?
Recover from the backup you made before this happened.
 

kenzimarcel

Commendable
Feb 13, 2018
34
6
1,545
That is a common occurrence when more than one physical drive is connected when do a Windows install.
Very very common.
every time i have installed windows, i have had multiple drives, and not once do i even get an option to move the boot drive. i just pick a disk and it formats the disk in its standard way.
 

kenzimarcel

Commendable
Feb 13, 2018
34
6
1,545
So you opened it to expose the platters and R/W arm?
Well, it was mostly dead before.
Now, it is completely dead.



Recover from the backup you made before this happened.
opening a drive is not that bad. unless he took a knife to the platters, its still fine. also, lets be real, if he had a backup, he would have already used it.
 

USAFRet

Titan
Moderator
every time i have installed windows, i have had multiple drives, and not once do i even get an option to move the boot drive. i just pick a disk and it formats the disk in its standard way.
And yet we see that configuration result here every day.

It's not an option that you choose to do, it is what Windows often does by itself.

Windows is on the selected drive, the C.
The boot partition (System Reserved) is on the 'other drive'.
 
every time i have installed windows, i have had multiple drives, and not once do i even get an option to move the boot drive. i just pick a disk and it formats the disk in its standard way.
If you're installing windows and bootloader partition is already present on one of drives connected, then no new bootloader partition will be created.

And to boot system both drives will be required - old one containing bootloader and new one containing windows.
 

kenzimarcel

Commendable
Feb 13, 2018
34
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1,545
If you're installing windows and bootloader partition is already present on one of drives connected, then no new bootloader partition will be created.

And to boot system both drives will be required - old one containing bootloader and new one containing windows.
and so i maintain, its a rare occurence. even with windows on other drives, it doesnt always use that bootloader, as i have experienced. if however this is the case, then you can create a windows recovery disk, and use the command line to create a new boot partition. the answer here should suffice https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us...tion-how/181745f9-3303-4968-9851-5c213db9c89c
When I enter the BIOS boot menu yeah, I get the option to start the boot from my HDD. It says, Hard Disk :Toshiba HDWD110 and I put it in the first place.

so make yourself a windows 10 recovery disk, and try fix the mbr, if there is one. the tut here might help https://neosmart.net/wiki/fix-mbr/ .
 

Mrky

Prominent
Jul 20, 2020
28
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OK guys, just commenting your opinions doest help. Let's keep that to a minimum, and please write comments that will be helpful to me and the other users reading this. What I should have done cannot be changed and I am looking here for help not how to get back the time.
I don't have a backup, I've made a restoring point but I guess that won't be helpful eather.
 

Mrky

Prominent
Jul 20, 2020
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535
Please give us a detailed rundown of all the physical drives, and what partitions and data might have been on them.
"E partition is missing " tells us little.
OK, that is helpful. 😉 Since I cannot open the Windows I will try to write it all down. On C was my Windows, and some data not that important. On D were my older work files, and on the E were my newest work files, photos mostly since I am a photographer. I was working today and just got some weird message from Adobe Bridge program that I use to edit my photos that it cannot access the photos. Then I've opened the Windows Explorer to see what is happening and I see that the E partition is missing. Tried to see if it is hidden, it was not. Inspecting it I've found out that it is making some weird noise. The other HDD was running smoothly, and this one made some noise like it was jammed or something. So my guess was that it was a hardware problem. I've searched the internet on how to fix it, and bunch of videos on YouTube was telling me I should open it and try to repair the hand, so I've done that. And that's it, I've reconnected it, now I have a better sound, it doesn't sound stuck, it is running smoothly, but all I get now it's the message I've already wrote about. Reboot and Select proper Boot device. That's really all that happened.
 

Mrky

Prominent
Jul 20, 2020
28
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Which partitions were on which physical drive?
What actual drives were in this? What type/make/model?

Since I weren't the who made the partitions, I really cannot say 100% which partition was on which drive, but my guess is that C and E were on Western Digital HDD model WD15EARS 1.5TB, the faulty one. The D partition is on Toshiba HDWD110 1TB, the working one.
 

USAFRet

Titan
Moderator
Since I weren't the who made the partitions, I really cannot say 100% which partition was on which drive, but my guess is that C and E were on Western Digital HDD model WD15EARS 1.5TB, the faulty one. The D partition is on Toshiba HDWD110 1TB, the working one.
I might have "guessed" otherwise.
C and D on one physical drive.
E on the other, along with possibly the System Reserved boot partition.

"Guessing", however, does not lead to "fixing".