[SOLVED] System trying to boot from the wrong HDD after power outage

AsadHabib

Distinguished
Nov 6, 2013
60
2
18,545
Hi forum,

TLDR: after power outage, system tried to repair my files during bootup and somehow ended up thinking that my secondary hdd was the one that should have priority of boot. if i remove that hardisk, windows boots up just fine like before but this one has all my data.

So i had a random power outage just now. I was using my system at that time. i5 9400 with b360m gigabyte mobo and windows 10. I have an SSD which has my windows in it. I also have another normal hard drive that I used before i bought this ssd. Now, i use it for storage purposes.

It still has its old windows 8 drive in it but ive deleted most of the stuff windows related from it by now.

After the power outage, when i try to boot the system tells me your system files are missing or corrupted and you need to use a windows disk/media to recover your windows. Here's the interesting bit: If i remove the old hard drive, my windows boots perfectly like it did before. So what i think is happening here is that when i tried booting after the power went out, some stuff happened and my system tried to repair some corrupted files and in doing so thought of my old hard drive as the primary windows drive and somehow "assigned" it priority over my actual hdd.'

Anyone has a work around for this?

what i've tried, going into bios and forcing it to change priority to my ssd. doesn't work, it comes right back to the bios screen after i save.
 
Solution
Not the WIndows foler, but rather the System Reserved partition.

As a test, disconnect that drive completely and see is the system boots up properly.

AsadHabib

Distinguished
Nov 6, 2013
60
2
18,545
And it almost certainly still has the original boot partition, which it what it is attempting to boot from.

That's the funny thing, it doesn't have the Windows folder anymore. only program files. I somehow got it to boot back up from windows 10 but i can't format this drive, it keeps telling me its in use.