HDD won't boot unless old HDD is present.

[backtits]

I recently bought a new Hitachi HDD and hooked it up to my old computer. The old computer had Windows 8 on it, and so I installed windows 8 on the new HDD as well as I was planning on using it later in a seperate computer. I've now built this seperate computer, but whenever I try to boot up from just the one Hitachi HDD, there's a boot error. It says that I need to use the installation disk because files are missing, but the HDD will boot just fine as long as I have the old HDD from my old computer connected as well.

Why can't I use the Hitachi seperately from the old HDD? I always have to have them both connected, and then wait for windows to ask me what volume to boot from, so I picked Volume 4, which is where my Hitachi HDD is located. It boots up and works perfectly. If I remove the old HDD, suddenly there's installation files missing from the Hitachi and it can't boot.

 

[legendkiller]

is it IDE or Sata HDDs? IDE usually a problem, you'll have to change the slave to master with those jumpers on the IDE...

 

[backtits]

They're both SATA.

 

[legendkiller]

They're both SATA.

go into BIOS and change the boot settings...

 

[backtits]

What do you mean? Change what settings?

 

[legendkiller]

there should be boot setting in BIOS, shouldn't be hard to get into BIOS and find it, it should display your HDD and boot option, also if you have Sata, pull out the jumper from your HDD first...

 

[ss202sl]

When you install Windows it creates a boot(hidden) partition. With 2 drives(dual boot) there is only 1 boot partition on only 1 drive. You will have to install windows on the new pc.

 

[backtits]

Best answer selected by backtits.

 

[backtits]

Thanks, I made a bootable USB and used it to repair the problem and it's working great now.