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[SOLVED] Hard drive not recognised

3K views 19 replies 3 participants last post by  makinu1der2 
#1 ·
My PC has the following hardware:- BIOSTAR Group G41D3+ 6.0 Bus Clock: 200 megahertz BIOS: American Megatrends Inc. 080015 12/28/2010; Processor: 3.00 gigahertz Intel Pentium Dual-Core; RAM: 8MB DDR3 1333; Kingston SVP100S 296G SSD (96GB); Seagate Barracuda ST3250310AS HD (250GB); Western Digital WD5000AAVS-00ZTB0 USB external disc (500GB). It is used for internet surfing, streaming (usually of live sports events), photos, letters and documents, and email.

The Seagate disc is the original disc with Windows XP Home installed and the external disc used for backup. I recently decided, in December, that I wanted to install an SSD with Windows 7 Home Premium and use the Seagate HD for storage. I have had no problems with this setup but recently my Seagate HD has been noisy at boot up, the noise lasting for a few minutes. It is still under warranty and I have been in contact with Seagate who have asked me to return the disc to them.

Last night I removed the Seagate disc, first having cloned it to the external disc, with a view to returning it, but when I tried to boot up the PC I was told that there was no bootable disc, despite the fact that I had previously been able to boot from both internal discs. When I look at the BIOS I discover that the first boot disc is listed as the SSD but with brackets around it.

Can anyone tell me how to make the PC boot up from the SSD once the Seagate drive has been removed? :sad:
 
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#3 ·
Re: Hard drive not recognised

If you put the drive back in does the pc boot if yes post a screen shot of disk manager with the drive installed so we can see the partition layout
 
#5 ·
Re: Hard drive not recognised

It appears the Seagate is the Active System disk as it had XP home on it before and I am guessing you left it installed when you added the SSD and installed Win7 that put "part" of the boot record on the Seagate. The picture doesnt look like Windows 7 disk manager but I can get a good idea what happened. I can't think of a way at the moment to make the SSD be the boot disk without a re-load. I would make sure you have a good backup before you start making attempts to run the Win7 repair on the drive to see if it can resolve the boot sector issue
 
#8 ·
Re: Hard drive not recognised

OK 2 posts with updated info 'thanks" Confirms my posted info. I am not sure if your asking a question or just providing confirmation on my post. Did you get a backup of the SSD ?
 
#10 ·
Re: Hard drive not recognised

I am not sure I follow your logic. If you backup then you have your data. I am not sure a "repair' will re-create the small partition that windows 7 installs at the beginning of the drive which I think is now on the "Seagate"

This “stub” of a partition, which is new in Windows 7, serves two functions. First, it holds the Boot Manager code and the Boot Configuration Database. Sec¬ond, it reserves space for the startup files required by the BitLocker Drive Encryption feature. If you ever decide to encrypt your system drive using BitLocker, you won’t have to repartition your system drive to make it possible.
 
#12 ·
Re: Hard drive not recognised

makinu1der2

His boot loader is on "another" drive that he needs to remove and RMA when its removed the system doesn't boot. So you telling us the repair will create a new boot loader partition on the SSD drive and not "effect" the existing partition with his programs and data correct ?
 
#14 ·
Re: Hard drive not recognised

Good to know! I have not see MS "move" partitions yet and I have not been in a position to try that before will be interesting to find out how it goes for SMCC
 
#19 ·
Re: Hard drive not recognised

I finally solved the problem using Option One in the attached document.

I disconnected the the Seagate HD and made the SSD active and ran the start up repair 3 times as instructed. The SSD booted up with no problem after the third repair. No idea why the repair has to be run 3 times, but it works! :grin:

Startup Repair - Run 3 Separate Times - Windows 7 Forums
 
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