Question Whenever I attach the HDD, laptop no longer boots from SSD ?

[Dasa]

Hello all,

Preface (should be irrelevant but just in case)

So I added a new SSD and made the mistake leaving HDD connected while installing win10 and found out that I had the boot info on HDD , I did a lot crap to fix it, a little from this guide, a little from that guide, it was a mess, anyway in the end I removed the HDD, I think I reinstalled win10 on SDD, anyway it works fine alone.

I later attached the HDD while windows is on, formatted it, removed all kind of partitions including the boot one and it worked fine.

I think I rebooted many times while HDD is attached but after 2 weeks of not using laptop, I boot up laptop and got an error about ethernet card
"Check cable Connection"
PXE-M0F: Exiting Intel PXE ROM
Operating System not found

I went into Bios, HDD is there and ofc has no system, Atheros boot Agent is next and there is no SSD.

Once I remove HDD, SSD works. I attched HDD, again same error.

Some extra info:
SSD is connected to where CD was and in Bios "IDE CD" is empty.
Sata mode is IDE mode.

What's going on?

A picture for Disk management after booting from SSD alone then connecting HDD:

 

[Lutfij]

What is the make and model of your laptop? Might want to check and see if your laptop is pending a BIOS update.

SSD is connected to where CD was and in Bios "IDE CD" is empty.
You should replace the HDD with the SSD and have the HDD in the secondary drive caddy. Set your SATA to AHCI and then reinstall the OS after removing your HDD, it should be faster this time around.

 

[Dasa]

What is the make and model of your laptop? Might want to check and see if your laptop is pending a BIOS update.

Hey Lutfij,
Acer Extensa 5635 ZR6 , there is no support for it. Bios is Phoenix 1.3311

SSD is connected to where CD was and in Bios "IDE CD" is empty.
You should replace the HDD with the SSD and have the HDD in the secondary drive caddy. Set your SATA to AHCI and then reinstall the OS after removing your HDD, it should be faster this time around.

When I connect SSD alone, it says beside it: IDE HDD

I don't mind if SSD doesn't work full speed (it won't reach beyond 375 MB/s) and clearly the CPU is the bottleneck, I prefer to avoid doing everything again, it was painfully slow transferring files to this old dumpster. ( 3MB/s using USB 2)

Based on all this and disk management picture, any idea why is this happening to me? or how to fix it without reinstallation?

 

[TerryLaze]

The bios is set up to boot from the internal hdd first and then go down the list of other ports, if you can't change that bios setting then you are pretty much forced to create boot info on that hard drive and let the system boot from that into the ssd.
Show a few pics from the bios if you can.

 

[Dasa]

The bios is set up to boot from the internal hdd first and then go down the list of other ports, if you can't change that bios setting then you are pretty much forced to create boot info on that hard drive and let the system boot from that into the ssd.
Show a few pics from the bios if you can.

Bios boot sequence is the first thing I check, there is no SSD when HDD is plugged in.

I posted picture of disk management, isn't that system reserved partition on the SSD containing the needed boot info? it also boots windows on it's own. Also C: on it says "boot" and D: does not have "boot" ???

Here are the bios settings

I changed IDE of the HDD to second place and disabled booting from network but did not help.
This IDE CD becomes IDE HDD when SSD is alone!

 

[dwd999]

Disk Management is frankly a poor tool for disk management. I would try booting a usb containing either Gparted or a Linux distro and examine the HDD with that. I suspect that Disk Management has still left some remnants of the old boot info and its confusing your bios. I would look to see that the HDD only has a GPT partition table header and that the space is totally unallocated. Then it would be okay to use Disk Management for one of the few things its good for and that's creating a new volume on the HDD and formatting it.

 

[TerryLaze]

I posted picture of disk management, isn't that system reserved partition on the SSD containing the needed boot info? it also boots windows on it's own. Also C: on it says "boot" and D: does not have "boot" ???

Yes, I also think that everything is ok with the ssd.

I changed IDE of the HDD to second place and disabled booting from network but did not help.
This IDE CD becomes IDE HDD when SSD is alone!

Does it still show ide cd anywhere when the ssd is alone?
If it doesn't show at all it means the bios is not properly seeing all devices.

When the ssd is alone the bios probably fails to boot from ide cd and goes to the next one in line which is ide hdd and boots from the first one it finds, which is the ssd in that case.

But when both drives are connected it fails to boot from ide cd and boots from the first ide hdd drive it finds which then is the old hdd.

Most bios have an extra menu where you can change the order of available hdds so you could put the ssd on a higher place than the hdd and it would boot.

Did you already try to put the ssd in the place of the hdd and not the place of the cd?! That should work without having to change anything on the installation of the ssd.

 

[Dasa]

Disk Management is frankly a poor tool for disk management. I would try booting a usb containing either Gparted or a Linux distro and examine the HDD with that. I suspect that Disk Management has still left some remnants of the old boot info and its confusing your bios. I would look to see that the HDD only has a GPT partition table header and that the space is totally unallocated. Then it would be okay to use Disk Management for one of the few things its good for and that's creating a new volume on the HDD and formatting it.

Do you see anything wrong? I didn't see anything with my noob eyes.

 

[Dasa]

Does it still show ide cd anywhere when the ssd is alone?
If it doesn't show at all it means the bios is not properly seeing all devices.

When the ssd is alone the bios probably fails to boot from ide cd and goes to the next one in line which is ide hdd and boots from the first one it finds, which is the ssd in that case.

But when both drives are connected it fails to boot from ide cd and boots from the first ide hdd drive it finds which then is the old hdd.

Most bios have an extra menu where you can change the order of available hdds so you could put the ssd on a higher place than the hdd and it would boot.

Did you already try to put the ssd in the place of the hdd and not the place of the cd?! That should work without having to change anything on the installation of the ssd.

I always see IDE CD and IDE HDD ...

but IDE CD is always empty!

I just switched SSD (to HDD default location) with HDD (to CD drive location) and HDD is visible in windows but not visible in bios! I rebooted several times, same thing...

I only see this boot priority order list in bios....

 

[dwd999]

Do you see anything wrong? I didn't see anything with my noob eyes.

The Kingston drive is missing a partition. A normal Windows installation has 4 partitions, the second one being a 16MB Microsoft Reserved partition necessary for booting. You will have to reinstall Windows, with only the 1 Kingston drive connected, to have the correct partition configuration.

 

[Dasa]

The Kingston drive is missing a partition. A normal Windows installation has 4 partitions, the second one being a 16MB Microsoft Reserved partition necessary for booting. You will have to reinstall Windows, with only the 1 Kingston drive connected, to have the correct partition configuration.

I searched online and looked at many disk management screens, I can't find anything showing 4 partitions except weird cases of extra recovery partitions, OEM recovery partitions, extra drives, 3 seem to be normal.

I checked one tutorial and the end screen didn't have 4 partitions

Also how does windows boot from SSD then? when I switched places with HDD, it now managed to boot from SSD and still see HDD under windows, so it already has boot partition, the only difference I saw was that some System Reserved where 100MB instead of 50MB, it could be me who picked that number, can't recall.

Are you 100% sure of what you said? please show me an MBR style disk with those 4 partitions, I can't find anything.

Also isn't it weird that bios still can't see HDD even when windows can? I entered boot menu (F12) and it only listed SSD (network boot disabled). Something is wrong here, right?

 

[TerryLaze]

I searched online and looked at many disk management screens, I can't find anything showing 4 partitions except weird cases of extra recovery partitions, OEM recovery partitions, extra drives, 3 seem to be normal.

I checked one tutorial and the end screen didn't have 4 partitions

Also how does windows boot from SSD then? when I switched places with HDD, it now managed to boot from SSD and still see HDD under windows, so it already has boot partition, the only difference I saw was that some System Reserved where 100MB instead of 50MB, it could be me who picked that number, can't recall.

Are you 100% sure of what you said? please show me an MBR style disk with those 4 partitions, I can't find anything.

Also isn't it weird that bios still can't see HDD even when windows can? I entered boot menu (F12) and it only listed SSD (network boot disabled). Something is wrong here, right?

A small ~16Mb partition is often created for alignment, to not slow down the ssd.
Laptop bios are often extremely weird and picky, you should read up on your laptop specifically, maybe somebody has already found the proper way to do it, but maybe you will have to risk burning a custom bios with better support, if you can find one that is.

 

[dwd999]

I searched online and looked at many disk management screens, I can't find anything showing 4 partitions except weird cases of extra recovery partitions, OEM recovery partitions, extra drives, 3 seem to be normal.

I checked one tutorial and the end screen didn't have 4 partitions

Also how does windows boot from SSD then? when I switched places with HDD, it now managed to boot from SSD and still see HDD under windows, so it already has boot partition, the only difference I saw was that some System Reserved where 100MB instead of 50MB, it could be me who picked that number, can't recall.

Are you 100% sure of what you said? please show me an MBR style disk with those 4 partitions, I can't find anything.

Also isn't it weird that bios still can't see HDD even when windows can? I entered boot menu (F12) and it only listed SSD (network boot disabled). Something is wrong here, right?

Windows prefers a GPT partition table so if you're still using MBR you may have problems in the future. Its always best to do it correctly right from the start to avoid later problems so it would be best now to use Gparted to create a GPT partition table on the disk and reinstall Windows to avoid future problems.

 

[MWink64]

Windows prefers a GPT partition table so if you're still using MBR you may have problems in the future. Its always best to do it correctly right from the start to avoid later problems so it would be best now to use Gparted to create a GPT partition table on the disk and reinstall Windows to avoid future problems.

That system is a Core 2 Duo. Those almost always used a BIOS, not UEFI. An MBR partition table would be appropriate here. GPT would be more likely to cause trouble.