I cant boot a single Sata HDD with win7

[delriooo]

I recently had installed win7 on a WD 160gb SATA HDD and had a WD 250gb SATA HDD for storage, and everything worked perfectly fine. Now, the tricky part is the following: I removed the WD 250 gb I use for storage and just left the WD 160 gb that originally was booting with Win7 and now it says DISC BOOT FAILURE, INSERT SYSTEM DISC AND PRESS ENTER

Can anyone help me out, all im interested in is to make that PC work with a single Sata HDD.

THX

 

[J_E_D_70]

Did you install Windows when both HDDs were connected originally? Can cause problems if you remove one later on.

Do you have your Windows install disc? May be able to boot to it and repair boot record.

 

[delriooo]

yes, I originally installed windows with both SATA HDD connected, now that I took out the one I use for storage it wont let me boot windows up again.

I will definitely try what you just mentioned, just one question should I try that without the storage HDD right?

 

[J_E_D_70]

Yep - without the storage drive. Worst case you can plug storage one in, backup data (if needed), unplug storage, and reinstall Windows.

 

[clutchc]

Go into BIOS and check that the Win7 drive is set as a boot device.

 

[delriooo]

thx a lot,, reinstalling windows with just that one SATA HDD worked out perfectly, thanks.

 

[Tom Tancredi]

Sounds like you originally had RAID implemented, and when you removed one drive you 'broke' the RAID. Try to make sure you don't have RAID implemented if you plan to add / remove drive, leave it set to AHCI

 

[Hawkeye22]

thx a lot,, reinstalling windows with just that one SATA HDD worked out perfectly, thanks.

I guess I'm a little late. You could have disconnected the storage drive and ran a repair install on the OS drive. This would have created a new boot loader on the OS drive and fixed the problem.

 

[Hawkeye22]

Sounds like you originally had RAID implemented, and when you removed one drive you 'broke' the RAID. Try to make sure you don't have RAID implemented if you plan to add / remove drive, leave it set to AHCI

Windows always tries to put the boot loader on a seperate drive from the OS. Only having 1 drive connected to the motherboard when installing windows forces windows to put the boot loader and OS on the same drive.

 

[Tom Tancredi]

Sounds like you originally had RAID implemented, and when you removed one drive you 'broke' the RAID. Try to make sure you don't have RAID implemented if you plan to add / remove drive, leave it set to AHCI

Windows always tries to put the boot loader on a seperate drive from the OS. Only having 1 drive connected to the motherboard when installing windows forces windows to put the boot loader and OS on the same drive.

True, but if the Hardware is RAID enabled, even with a single drive RAID is still enabled in Windows and 'wraps' the OS/etc. inside it. Introducing a second drive (for a non-tech sort) would 'follow the prompts' causing the second drive to be added to the RAID, but (as he did) if the second drive is removed 'breaks the RAID' even if you introduced Windows to a single drive. That is the difference in normal AHCI configurations and RAID, RAID turns all the drives into 'one big drive' and any messing with the 'one big drive' causes it to break. Best analogy would be a bicycle, while a unicycle (one wheel) can be ridden by anyone and work fine, if your riding a bicycle (two wheels) and try to 'remove one' tire, you 'break' the bike and it can't be ridden.