Question SSD doesnt let me boot from it

NickyTechyGuy

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Mar 13, 2016
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Everything worked perfect until i took off the back of my case and then unplugged my HDDs, then plugged everything back in. My SSD shows up in the ASUS UEFI BIOS "SATA Information" menu, but doesn't appear in the "boot order" menu. The SSD is M.2 (SATA III) while the HDDs are just standard SATA drives. I looked at the drives in the windows installation menu, and it is still recognized after I click "refresh" and is just as full as before any of this. Any ideas?
 

NickyTechyGuy

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You may have swapped SATA cables. Check in BIOS (UEFI) that the SSD is still the 1st drive. Then it should show up in the boot order selection.
Are you talking about the hard drives? Because I have an m.2 ssd so that wouldn't have changed slots or anything, I can try moving the cables around though for my hard drives.
 

NickyTechyGuy

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this is what it looks like (in EZ view)
IMG_20200701_184441864.jpg
 

NickyTechyGuy

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Yeah, they're former installs that have left over files, so its not actually possible to boot into either of those. I tried swapping the SATA cables around and got nothing, Ive also tried unplugging my GPU and completely unplugging my harddrives to no avail. Also tried reseating my m.2 twice and nothing changed.
It looks like you have two Win10 installations. One of each drive.
 

clutchc

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Yeah, they're former installs that have left over files, so its not actually possible to boot into either of those. I tried swapping the SATA cables around and got nothing, Ive also tried unplugging my GPU and completely unplugging my harddrives to no avail. Also tried reseating my m.2 twice and nothing changed.
Try removing the SATA cables from all drives except for the SSD. See if the SSD is recognized. And if the system boots.
 

NickyTechyGuy

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You really need to be doing this in advanced mode. I'm suspecting that you left the HDDs in place when you installed Win10 with the SSD, and the OS installed its boot sector to one of them instead.
from what I saw in advanced, it just shows me my options for what i can select as a boot device and doesnt list the SSD. I was using it fine for 6 months now until today when i unplugged my HDDs to install win10 on a seperate SSD, then unplugging it and putting HDDs back in. Only then did it stop letting me access my SSDs win10, so i don't know what during that install could have caused it. i really dont wanna reinsta windows because i have important files that need backup and i can't get in windows to do so
 

NickyTechyGuy

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i went into windows setup to perform these tasks, and as you can see, the only bootable device Windows detects is D:\, the letter it gives to my SSD. /fixboot and /fixmbr should be enough to fix my issue if the boot sector was corrupted, but I still don't see my SSD when in my BIOS
IMG_20200702_122549696.jpg
IMG_20200702_122600218.jpg
 

NickyTechyGuy

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Mar 13, 2016
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i went into windows setup to perform these tasks, and as you can see, the only bootable device Windows detects is D:\, the letter it gives to my SSD. /fixboot and /fixmbr should be enough to fix my issue if the boot sector was corrupted, but I still don't see my SSD when in my BIOS
IMG_20200702_122549696.jpg
IMG_20200702_122600218.jpg
The last step I did, you can see it says there are "indistinguishable devices" in the list already, so I'm assuming it thinks it's already in the boot order. However, I'm going to try this again with my HDDs unplugged to make sure.
 

NickyTechyGuy

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Mar 13, 2016
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The last step I did, you can see it says there are "indistinguishable devices" in the list already, so I'm assuming it thinks it's already in the boot order. However, I'm going to try this again with my HDDs unplugged to make sure.
IMG_20200702_123451747.jpg

Somehow this corrupted the boot sector on my windows installation flashdrive, so I'm going to have to reinstall this now. I also tried to back up files from one drive to another by using CMD prompt, but I don't have administrator privileges.