Question Problem with two drives being detected in bios. help please!

[Itelect]

If I remove all sata devices from my motherboard, upon reboot the bios says it has detected two hard drives, and then continues to boot into windows even though there are no hard drives physically connected to the motherboard. I have updated my bios, clear cmos, removed the battery from motherboard. While in windows I can have access to my hard drives data even though they are not physically connected. It appears their is a copy of my data stored somewhere that is allowing my pc to access. Where and how this could be possible. If I physically connect the hard drives to the motherboard the bios detects these but I don't know if I am physically booting off my hard drive or the virtual drive. Any ideas as this is a tricky one.

 

[Darkbreeze]

No, it's not a tricky one. If there were NO drives attached, it could not boot. Period. There is NO place that a copy of Windows could be "hidden" or "stored" without a drive of some kind attached. Most likely, Windows is not installed on a standard SATA SSD or HDD unless is is mounted on the back of the motherboard tray, but on an M.2 drive, whether SATA or PCI, that is plugged into an M.2 slot on the motherboard.

Disconnecting SATA data and power cables would have not effect on this at all. There are a few other types as well. Knowing your full system hardware specifications and a little bit of history of the system would go a long way towards helping to solve your "mystery".

It will look similar to this. https://www.groovypost.com/howto/install-nvme-m2-ssd-hard-drive/

Other than that, there is either another drive mounted on the back of the motherboard tray that you are unaware of, or there is a bootable copy of Windows on a USB drive that is still attached to the system. There are no other possibilities. Some kind of drive is attached still even if you've disconnected ten drives from the system.

 

[Itelect]

Well there definitely is no M2 Drive installed as none was purchased and there are no other hard drives secretly installed other than what i have. No usb plugged in.

Intel Core 6 i7 5820K 3.3Ghz 2011-3pin

Samsung 500gb 850 EVO PRO SSD Operating System / 3tb / 1Tb HDD / 2TBHDD / DVD ROM

Asus X99-pro usb 3.1 LG-2011

4G GTX 970 Gigabyte (G1 Gaming)

G-Skill Ripjaws RED 32G Kit 2400 (8Gx4) DDR4

Thermaltake Chaser A71 LCS Full Tower Chassis

Thermaltake Toughpower 80+ Gold 850

coolermaster hyper cooler

 

[iMatty]

Feels like your computer has some kind of electronic ghosts, fam how is it possible that a computer boots with no drives attached? LOL


And does he seem pissed about it

No, it's not a tricky one. If there were NO drives attached, it could not boot. Period. There is NO place that a copy of Windows could be "hidden" or "stored" without a drive of some kind attached. Most likely, Windows is not installed on a standard SATA SSD or HDD unless is is mounted on the back of the motherboard tray, but on an M.2 drive, whether SATA or PCI, that is plugged into an M.2 slot on the motherboard.

Disconnecting SATA data and power cables would have not effect on this at all. There are a few other types as well. Knowing your full system hardware specifications and a little bit of history of the system would go a long way towards helping to solve your "mystery".

It will look similar to this. https://www.groovypost.com/howto/install-nvme-m2-ssd-hard-drive/

Other than that, there is either another drive mounted on the back of the motherboard tray that you are unaware of, or there is a bootable copy of Windows on a USB drive that is still attached to the system. There are no other possibilities. Some kind of drive is attached still even if you've disconnected ten drives from the system.

 

[Itelect]

Well as weird as it seems its true. I updated the BIOS and it had fixed problems with booting issues, but still has not resolved the above problem. The only solution I see is to replace the motherboard as I have important data on my hard drives and don't want to lose them because I don't know if I am booting off the physical hard drive or virtual one so it seems. I have removed all hard drives and turn pc on, and during the post and even the bios screen detected two of my hard drives that were not physically installed and booted into windows without my hard drive.

 

[iMatty]

You cant be really booting off a virtual hard drive there is nothing like that, that's inside the windows it self.

 

[SkyNetRising]

Well there definitely is no M2 Drive installed as none was purchased and there are no other hard drives secretly installed other than what i have. No usb plugged in.
Asus X99-pro usb 3.1 LG-2011

Can you make top view photo of your motherboard and show us?

 

[iMatty]

Was about to say that!

Can you make top view photo of your motherboard and show us?

 

[Darkbreeze]

If in fact this is what is happening, I'd bet that system or motherboard was purchased used, and that the M.2 drive was already installed. Otherwise, what is being described is patently impossible. It. Can't. Happen. Not without a drive. There is NO PLACE ANYWHERE on a motherboard or elsewhere in the system with enough capacity to support storing the boot partition, EFI partition, and operating system partition, or even just the OS partition (C that would be required for it to happen for that matter.

Because IF it COULD, people would just stop buying buying and using drives for the OS. There is a drive somewhere or else the whole thing is simply a trollscapade. One or the other.

As mentioned, a virtual machine requires a storage drive of some kind in order to work and to then also create a virtual drive in the VM. No drive, no VM.

The BIOS, is full. There isn't even enough room on the BIOS ROM to add more features in most cases, which is one of the limiting factors of modern systems and one of the reasons they are looking to move away from BIOS and UEFI to some other type of configuration in order to get past the limitations of the BIOS ROM size. Even when they add features via BIOS updates, sometimes it requires that they LOSE something in the BIOS features that was there previously due to a lack of capacity. So there is no Windows operating system hiding there either.

 

[Itelect]

.this PC was built by us 3 years ago. No m2 installed. Cant explain why someone is looking at it now see how it goes though I think I just replace mbd.

 

[SkyNetRising]

Still would like to see photo of your motherboard.

 

[Darkbreeze]

Great. You should send me the motherboard and I'll use it, because I'm sure there is nothing wrong with it. There is nothing, ever, that could go wrong with a motherboard that would cause you to be booting from a ghost copy of windows.

 

[Darkbreeze]

Still would like to see photo of your motherboard.

I doubt that's going to happen. Otherwise we'd see there is an M.2 or U.2 drive installed. If there is no standard SATA device attached to the motherboard then we already KNOW there has to be a socketed device attached OR the whole thread is a massive trolling effort. There are no other possibilities that I can think of, and I've stretched my imagination on this as far as it will go.

 

[iMatty]

Its one of both, either hes on something or hes just dreaming.
It just doesn't happen.

 

[Rogue Leader]

Asus X99-pro usb 3.1

For the record this motherboard has TWO M.2 slots in it. 100% chance that one of them is your Windows drive and you're not seeing it.

If you're gonna throw it out send it my way, I can use a "broken" X99 board any day of the week (and apparently a free M.2 drive).

 

[iMatty]

Do me a favor and send it to me, I need an upgrade.

 

[AllanGH]

PXE boot is possible, but that would be pretty obvious, and would be information that is being withheld as a deliberate trolling effort.

 

[Darkbreeze]

Last time I checked, booting from network drives didn't show up as physical drives in the BIOS. Two of them to be exact.

 

[USAFRet]

If I remove all sata devices from my motherboard, upon reboot the bios says it has detected two hard drives, and then continues to boot into windows even though there are no hard drives physically connected to the motherboard. I have updated my bios, clear cmos, removed the battery from motherboard. While in windows I can have access to my hard drives data even though they are not physically connected. It appears their is a copy of my data stored somewhere that is allowing my pc to access. Where and how this could be possible. If I physically connect the hard drives to the motherboard the bios detects these but I don't know if I am physically booting off my hard drive or the virtual drive. Any ideas as this is a tricky one.

Pics or it didn't happen.

 

[AllanGH]

Last time I checked, booting from network drives didn't show up as physical drives in the BIOS. Two of them to be exact.

I read it wrong, then. My interpretation was two drives being removed, no drives being detected, but still boots.

 

[Darkbreeze]

While in windows I can have access to my hard drives data even though they are not physically connected.

even the bios screen detected two of my hard drives that were not physically installed and booted into windows without my hard drive.

 

[Itelect]

Guys there are no other hard drives or devices installed. I can't take a photo of motherboard its with someone right now. Even he is scratching his head. Its simple, I removed all SATAs from the ports there is no M2, No USB. You turn on the pc and boot into BIOS and still two hard drives are being detected even though they are removed and can boot into windows and access files.

 

[SkyNetRising]

I won't believe it until I see a photo of motherboard.
Also - would like to see screenshot from Device Manager with Disk Drives section expanded.

You're probably just trolling us.

 

[Darkbreeze]

I agree, because it's patently impossible. No system can, or will, boot without the devices required for it to boot, being present. It simply IS NOT POSSIBLE without a drive. There is no other magical way for it to create the boot, EFI and OS partitions and hold them somehow in memory or store them in the BIOS. Either there is a drive connected or you are a troll. And either way, the refusal to provide the proof is irrelevant because it would be a simple matter to remove any drives a snap an image. So, closing this thread.

 

[Rogue Leader]

OP if you can provide some proof please send myself or @Darkbreeze a message privately and we will reopen the thread. Otherwise this screams of trolling.