pc ignoring boot priority

[monkmith]

mobo: p8p67m pro ASUS

so i've installed a new SSD, figured i'd swap to 10 at the same time. i've done this on a laptop with one HD before so i figured i knew what i was doing.

upgraded from 7 to 10 on my old HDD, since that's needed to validate the system to run 10 (as i understand). after the update finished, i cut the system off, pulled the plugs on the old HD, and installed the SSD. i installed windows 10 on the ssd from a flash drive then i cut my system off and plugged my old HDD back in. i've set boot priority in the bios so the ssd sits in front of the hd yet it still insist on booting from the hd.

i'm guessing i need to format the hd, but i cant figure out how to do that from the bios and i can't do it in windows because its running off of that. in my bios the HD is listed as UEFI

edit: gone to bios and the old drive was listed as windows boot manager or something like that. made sure the ssd was given highest priority and hit f8 to open boot manager. clicked that and now it boots from the SSD but cannot see the old drive within windows. i'm guessing thats because the old drive is UEFI?

 

[Bryan Choi]

this is probably the laziest method but whenever this happens to me i just boot on without the old drive connected (but still powered on, no sata connected yet) and they once im on i just reconnect the old hdd. i know this is probably so bad for the old hdd but its old for a reason, im sure it can take a beating.

 

[Seamz]

HDD are designed to be hot swappable, so as long as the power is plugged in and just not the SATA you should be safe. Are you sure the boot priority is set correctly in both the bios and the quick boot menu? I should check if your mobo has it, but I would assume sandy bridge had that feature.

 

[monkmith]

so the answer is to unplug the sata from the HDD, let the system boot like normal from the SSD, and when in windows plug the HDD sata back in and format it within windows? in bios looking at sata configuration it says that none of them are hot plug enabled, would i need to enable this to get it to work?

either way i'm pretty sure i have boot priority correctly set. mobo has a gui with what i guess is the quick boot menu (calls itself EZ mode, has boot priority as a drag and drop at bottom with some bad factory overclock settings to toggle between). for the boot priority i though all i had to do was drag the ssd to the head of the list in front of the old hdd (all the way to the left). do i need to do something else?

 

[Seamz]

There's a quick boot menu like you described but there should also be a boot menu that is within the advanced setup functions. Have you gone into those settings and arranged the boot priority there as well?

 

[monkmith]

well i tried what was suggested, unplugging sata from old HDD, starting pc to make sure it boots from SSD, and then plugging sata back into HDD while in windows. i still can't detect the old HDD inside windows when the OS is launched from the SSD. nothing comes up when i plug it back in.

another odd thing i noticed. when i tried to boot directly from the ssd it said it couldn't detect the os. so i had to swap windows boot manager back in front of the SSD in the bios to get it to launch.

 

[monkmith]

There's a quick boot menu like you described but there should also be a boot menu that is within the advanced setup functions. Have you gone into those settings and arranged the boot priority there as well?

i've gone and checked that. it pretty much reflects what i set in the ez mode menu.

boot 1: windows boot manager
boot 2: the new SSD
boot 3: flash card reader (not sure what thats even an option)
boot 4: something listed as ihas224 (it could be the HDD, a hitachi, but i have no idea why its named that) or it could be the cd rom.

hell the HDD isn't even in the list to choose there. though below i can choose it as a boot override?

like i said above, when i get it to launch the OS purely from the SSD it just doesn't seem able to detect the hard drive within windows.

 

[monkmith]

now i'm really just confused.

looking at bios the old HDD isn't a choice for boot, on either the simple or advanced menu. looking in the advanced menu SATA control its still listed there, but when i load into windows (which now correctly does it from the SSD) i just can't detect the old HDD.

 

[monkmith]

yes! found the fix while looking around for others with the problem.

used windows memory diagnostic tool, it ran through and rebooted and now my system can see the HDD in windows!