How to make HDD bootable?

[trickynick]

I accidentally marked my other thread as solved.

I've got both my drives marked as active, but it does not boot from the 2nd drive. How can I make it bootable?

 

[siRwSsi]

Why do you want to make it bootable?do you want to dual booth? You dont need to make it bootable, its for storage

 

[trickynick]

I'm planning on upgrading to windows 10. In case it screws up, I'll have the other drive bootable without having to reinstall everything. I've already made it a clone, now to make it bootable so I can boot up with it in case the upgrade fails.

 

[siRwSsi]

Ohh, so you want to have two windows os in your pc?

 

[trickynick]

Only temporarily. Once I feel that Windows 10 is good to go, making sure all programs/games/etc work, then I'll get rid of the other drive by formatting it and using it as a back up drive.

 

[Unolocogringo]

Unplug your old drive and the computer should boot from the cloned drive.
To test it.
Or go into the bios and change boot order.

 

[trickynick]

I tried that, but it didn't boot. Then again, I did notice something in bios. I am unable to select the 2nd HDD to boot from. When I disable the first port in BIOS it gives me an error stating a device is missing with no option to pick the 2nd drive.

 

[siRwSsi]

Heres a link that may help you. http://www.howtogeek.com/214477/how-to-dual-boot-two-or-more-versions-of-windows/

 

[trickynick]

Not looking to dual boot. Since I have to do an in-place upgrade of windows 7 to windows 10 to take advantage of the free upgrade so I want to have the ability to go back to Windows 7 without any fuss.

 

[Unolocogringo]

Do not disable ports. ports 1 & 2 are on the same channel.
In the boot menu change the order of boot in the boot menu. Make the cloned drive 1st boot device.
Or unplug your original drive and the computer should boot from the cloned drive

 

[trickynick]

That leads to one of my other issues: The 2nd drive (or cloned drive) is not in the boot menu otherwise I'd have that done already.

 

[Unolocogringo]

You have 2 options.
Option 1
Dual boot from the splash screen where you choose which operating system to start.
http://www.majorgeeks.com/files/details/easybcd.html
Down load Easy BCD and add the second drive to the boot menu splash screen.
option 2
Or go into the bios and set the cloned drive as the first boot drive in the bios boot order menu. You will have to change it each time you want to boot to another drive..

 

[trickynick]

To make sure I do this correctly using EasyBCD.

1) Select Add New Entry
2) Select Windows Vista/7/8
3) Give it a name: Windows 7 Backup
4) Select Drive G: (as this is my 2nd drive)
5) Click Ann Entry

Are the above steps correct?

 

[Unolocogringo]

Yes those are correct.