PC refuses to boot without extra non-OS drive

[Quentin Chalmers]

So today I was going to use Windows to make a system image of my OS drive in case I needed it later. However, Windows 7 doesn't allow you to choose which drives to include in the image. I currently have two drives, a 120 GB Samsung 840 EVO SSD for my OS and a 1 TB WD Black HDD for storage. After searching the forums for a while it looked like the easiest way to remove my 1 TB HDD from the system image would be to unplug its power cable temporarily; so I tried that. Upon boot, my computer asked me to either change the boot drive or plug it in and press any key. I restarted my computer and checked the BIOS boot settings, my Samsung SSD with the OS on it was indeed the stated boot drive.

I am totally baffled. Why will my PC not boot when I unplug my WD 1 TB storage drive? All I have on it are some games and programs, nothing related to the actual OS.

I have been doing research, and people with the same issue as me have solved it by moving the bootloader onto the C: drive. This doesn't apply to me however because I added my WD HDD and formatted it after the OS was already installed on my SSD.

Any help is appreciated.

Specs:

Windows Seven Ultimate SP1
ASUS M5A99X EVO R2.0
AMD FX-8320 @ 4.5 GHz (1.425 volts)
Zalman CNPS9500A-LED CPU Cooler
G.Skill Ares Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 (8-8-8-24)
Samsung 840 EVO 120GB SSD
Western Digital BLACK SERIES 1TB 7500 RPM
PNY GeForce GTX 760 OC 2GB
NZXT Phantom 410 (Black/Orange) ATX Mid Tower
Corsair 600W Modular

 

[USAFRet]

Almost certainly this has happened because you had both drives connected when you installed the OS on the SSD. With 2 drives connected, Windows in its infinite wisdom, puts the System Reserved boot partition on the second drive.
Remove it, and no boot for you.

 

[mjmacka]

I agree with USAFRet. You should be able to use any disk cloning utility to transfer the System Reserved partition to the SSD if there is enough unused space.

 

[Quentin Chalmers]

Almost certainly this has happened because you had both drives connected when you installed the OS on the SSD. With 2 drives connected, Windows in its infinite wisdom, puts the System Reserved boot partition on the second drive.
Remove it, and no boot for you.

Thank you for the quick response.

Im not sure if you read, but: "I added my WD HDD and formatted it after the OS was already installed on my SSD". It is not possible that any OS files are on the HDD because I formatted it to NTFS after I was already up and running windows.

 

[USAFRet]

Almost certainly this has happened because you had both drives connected when you installed the OS on the SSD. With 2 drives connected, Windows in its infinite wisdom, puts the System Reserved boot partition on the second drive.
Remove it, and no boot for you.

Thank you for the quick response.

Im not sure if you read, but: "I added my WD HDD and formatted it after the OS was already installed on my SSD". It is not possible that any OS files are on the HDD because I formatted it to NTFS after I was already up and running windows.

Ah, I guess I missed that.

So, removing the HDD causes no boot....
Start the PC, get into Disk Management, and post a screencap of that window. Specifically the bottom part showing the partitions.

 

[Quentin Chalmers]

Almost certainly this has happened because you had both drives connected when you installed the OS on the SSD. With 2 drives connected, Windows in its infinite wisdom, puts the System Reserved boot partition on the second drive.
Remove it, and no boot for you.

Thank you for the quick response.

Im not sure if you read, but: "I added my WD HDD and formatted it after the OS was already installed on my SSD". It is not possible that any OS files are on the HDD because I formatted it to NTFS after I was already up and running windows.

Ah, I guess I missed that.

So, removing the HDD causes no boot....
Start the PC, get into Disk Management, and post a screencap of that window. Specifically the bottom part showing the partitions.

Will do as soon as I get back from work today, probably in about 7 hours.

 

[Quentin Chalmers]

Almost certainly this has happened because you had both drives connected when you installed the OS on the SSD. With 2 drives connected, Windows in its infinite wisdom, puts the System Reserved boot partition on the second drive.
Remove it, and no boot for you.

Thank you for the quick response.

Im not sure if you read, but: "I added my WD HDD and formatted it after the OS was already installed on my SSD". It is not possible that any OS files are on the HDD because I formatted it to NTFS after I was already up and running windows.

Ah, I guess I missed that.

So, removing the HDD causes no boot....
Start the PC, get into Disk Management, and post a screencap of that window. Specifically the bottom part showing the partitions.

Well I just took a look in disk manager and what do you know somehow windows put the system reserve on my HDD. I have no idea how it did that after I formatted the drive...

That answers my question I guess. I will work on moving that partition to my SSD tomorrow and then I should be able to unplug my HDD and boot.