Current Events > Windows is installed on my SSD. Went to replace an HDD and now windows cant boot

(+) Yeah! (+)

Any ideas CE? This other HDD is failing and I need to replace it and windows is installed on the SSD anyway so I don't know why it's having issues.
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I doubt it, but if you see any jumpers on your HDD just pull them out.
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If you install windows while a second drive is in, it'll install part of the mbr on the hdd.

You have to install windows with the ssd being the only drive in there.
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Check to see if the boot order changed in BIOS.

ChromaticAngel posted...

I doubt it, but if you see any jumpers on your HDD just pull them out.

Worth a try as well.
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No jumpers on the HDD, and boot order is fine. I think I'm going to have to reinstall windows since the HDD was in when I installed it on the SDD.

Any ideas if I'll need to do a full reinstall or if I can just do a startup repair and try and prevent the drive from getting totally formatted?
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Fart_Tzar posted...

If you install windows while a second drive is in, it'll install part of the mbr on the hdd.

You have to install windows with the ssd being the only drive in there.

That's odd, any way to bypass this if you did have a second had installed but it's gone? Apart from fresh install
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Link43130 posted...

No jumpers on the HDD, and boot order is fine. I think I'm going to have to reinstall windows since the HDD was in when I installed it on the SDD.

Any ideas if I'll need to do a full reinstall or if I can just do a startup repair and try and prevent the drive from getting totally formatted?

You can try cloning the hdd to the new one, but honestly, just take all the drives out of the equation aside from the SSD, blow it away and do a fresh install. It'll boot faster and be more reliable in the future.
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hakujo posted...

That's odd, any way to bypass this if you did have a second had installed but it's gone? Apart from fresh install

Not that i've found. The case i've been using for the past 6 years has modular drive bays, so I just remove everything from the case before doing a format. Your best bet is to just unpower the drive while the reinstall is going.

You can try to do a 1:1 clone on the hdd, but this is kind of a dirty workaround that may not work reliably.
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Fart_Tzar posted...

hakujo posted...

That's odd, any way to bypass this if you did have a second had installed but it's gone? Apart from fresh install

Not that i've found. The case i've been using for the past 6 years has modular drive bays, so I just remove everything from the case before doing a format. Your best bet is to just unpower the drive while the reinstall is going.

You can try to do a 1:1 clone on the hdd, but this is kind of a dirty workaround that may not work reliably.

This SHOULD work provided the source HDD has a total capacity that is smaller than the destination HDD's total capacity.

Use Clonezilla to do this. You'll have to boot into it as a bootable USB, it's not something you run from within windows.
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Ok awesome, thanks. Didn't know of such a thing as my build has a ssd and hdd during build, may need to reinstall make sure it's as efficient as possible!
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Unplug every drive except the SSD, boot off of the Windows install media and do a startup repair.
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