PC won't boot up without secondary hard drive plugged in.

[Eleazar98]

I am trying to replace my secondary 320 GB hard drive with a new WD Blue 1TB drive, but I have just realized that the pc will not boot up without the second drive plugged in. I installed Windows 8 on the primary 160 GB hard drive, but in the Disk Management menu, the 320 GB hard drive is the one labeled as system. Also, for some reason the 320 GB does not show up in "This PC" since I re-installed my OS about a week ago. Below is a picture of the Disk Management menu.

Any help would be much appreciated.

 

[ArtPog]

Taking last things first...note the 320 GB secondary HDD has not been assigned a drive letter in Disk Management. That accounts for the drive not being detected in the system for access although it should be listed in the Disk drives section of Device Manager. So in DM assign a drive letter to the disk by right-clicking on the schematic and selecting the option "Change Drive Letter and Paths". Then reboot the system and determine whether the problem still exists.

I assume that 320 GB HDD contains an installed OS, yes? If so, (assuming you have no need for an installed OS on the secondary HDD), delete it or perhaps you're planning to format that drive now that you have a new 1 TB HDD. But BEFORE you do any of these things confirm that you have a bootable, completely functional OS on your 160 GB HDD which I assume you still desire to utilize as your boot drive.

 

[SuperSoph_WD]

Hello there, Eleazar!

It seems like you've made a common mistake when installing an operating system into a computer with two hard drives.
You should always unplug the secondary drive, because as you can see Windows confuses the HDDs and puts some of the system files on the secondary one as well, which causes the booting issues (when the secondary drive is unplugged).
I'd suggest you to start from scratch again and re-install Windows on the primary drive, but this time make sure you unplug the secondary drive from the SATA ports. Once the OS installation is completed, simply plug back your data drive - initialize first, then partition & format it and everything should run smoothly & flawlessly this time around.

Keep me posted if there's anything else I can assist you with!
Good luck!
SuperSoph_WD