Secondary hard drive shows up in Device Manager but NOT in my BIOS's Boot Menu.

[mariocova3]

I have a laptop with two hard drives. It originally had matching 320 GB HDDs in each slot but I replaced one of them with a 500 GB SSD.
I installed Windows 10 on the SSD and everything has worked fine. A couple days ago though I decided to install Ubuntu on the spare HDD. I went through the install process and the Ubuntu installer recognized and installed itself onto the spare HDD. After the successful installation the computer rebooted itself. Naturally, Windows 10 loaded up due to my default Boot order.

Here's where it gets tricky: I go into my boot options, and the only boot options I'm given are:
> Notebook Hard Drive
> Internal CD/DVD ROM Drive
There's only one hard drive...
So I go into the BIOS Setup Options and the only options that I am given are messing around with enabling and disabling the CD-ROM, Floppy, and Internal Network Adabter... It says nothing about there being two different hard drives in the boot menu.

Any help with this?

 

[Saga Lout]

First experiment - remove the Windows SSD and see what BIOS has to say about the other HDD.

 

[mariocova3]

Thank you for the response, I gave it a try.
Okay, so when I took out the SSD my laptop told me "No bootable device"...

So the HDD shows up in Device Manager, but my BIOS doesn't want to boot from it? Could it have something to do with the manufacturer's purpose for them to be used in RAID and not to be recognized or used as two separate functioning SATA drives?
>>>
I guess a more critical question would be: What are the possible reasons a working SATA drive would not be given any recognition in the Boot Priority Menu?
>>>
I am now going to put the HDD where the SSD used to be for the sake of troubleshooting. Will be back with results for those interested.
>>>
Just got back. Putting the HDD where the SSD was caused Ubuntu to load up... So there's nothing wrong with the HDD. Does anyone know why my laptop won't allow the second SATA drive to be bootable or how to make it so?

 

[Saga Lout]

Are there any clues in the BIOS settings one the hardware - not just the Boot options list.

 

[mariocova3]

I found the answer in this thread ^^
http://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/Notebook-Hardware-and-Upgrade-Questions/Dual-Hard-drive-in-dv7-laptops/td-p/136067

>> Unfortunately the second drive is merely for extra storage and is NOT bootable. <<

My laptop is the HP dv7... For those of you who come across this thread via google.
Thanks to Saga Lout for the troubleshooting help!

 

[ArtPog]

I sympathize with your problem re the inability to boot from the second drive bay of that series of an HP laptop. A few years ago I helped a friend in her purchase of the HP dv7t Quad Ed model - one of the primary reasons for the purchase was the fact that the laptop contained two drive bays and we were seeking that configuration for purposes of booting a system from either bay. And we found to our dismay that the model was designed so that the system prevented a boot from an otherwise viable bootable drive installed in the second bay. I went round & round with various HP technicians for about three months on this issue since they all insisted the system was bootable from either drive bay. Of course it turned out that was not the case.

To make matters even worse we were (are) unable to boot from a drive installed as a USB external drive containing a bootable OS. (We do this routinely in most of our desktop/laptop systems, including HP models). Again, the HP system in this series of laptops prevented a boot from a USB external drive.

Unfortunately the owner did not wish to install a caddy in place of the optical drive. I have heard there are problems in this area even with the caddy installation.

 

[Saga Lout]

I was about to recommend a bootable USB thumb drive until you said HP can block that as well, ArtPog. I reckon flashing the BIOS with a standard version could ge round that and could possibly overarch the second drive restriction as well.

I'm not recommending going ahead with that as this stage but if you can post the model reference, mariocova, I'll look further into it.

I get very annoyed at manufacturers who market products without saying they don't have full functionality.

 

[ArtPog]

I was about to recommend a bootable USB thumb drive until you said HP can block that as well, ArtPog. I reckon flashing the BIOS with a standard version could ge round that and could possibly overarch the second drive restriction as well.

I'm not recommending going ahead with that as this stage but if you can post the model reference, mariocova, I'll look further into it.

I het very annoyed at manufacturers who market products without saying they don't have full functionality.

I trust we're not talking about two different things here...
When you mention a " bootable USB thumb drive" are you referring to the Windows Media Tool contain the OS setup files designed for installation of the OS? If that's what you're referring to, that was NOT the problem with the HP laptop I was referring to.
While I haven't used the WMT to install, e.g., Win 10, on that laptop, I've no reason to believe it wouldn't work.

What I was precisely referring to would be a USB external drive containing a CLONED copy of the OS. In that situation the laptop's system prevented booting to the OS from that source.

As I say, I've no experience installing an OS (presumably Win 10) on that HP laptop using the Windows Media Tool (flash drive) containing the Win 10 OS setup files. I suspect it would work but I'm not sure.

 

[Saga Lout]

I was merely commenting that I was about to suggest another way of getting a system to run but when you wrote that HP had blocked that as well, I switched over to the notion of flashing the BIOS but I doubt that would do any good.

 

[ArtPog]

We were working with the latest BIOS upgrade re that particular HP laptop system. Bear in mind this problem was "discussed" with HP techs over a period of some months to no avail.

 

[mariocova3]

It's okay Saga Lout ^^ Thank you though.

For sake of correcting the thread: you can indeed boot from a USB thumb drive (worked for Windows 10 and Ubuntu).
All possible bootable devices in the BIOS are as follows:
>Notebook Hard Drive
>Internal CD/DVD ROM Drive
>USB Diskette on Key/USB Hard Disk
>USB CD/DVD ROM Drive
>USB Floppy
>Network Adapter

ArtPog I can feel that frustration. It's dumb that they would disable this feature... Oh well.

Thanks again for the responses on the issue Cheers!

P.S. I don't have the ability to do this but if someone could mark my provided link as the answer to this thread that would be nice. I can't do this cause it's my own thread.

-Mario