[Neville310]

I recently built a system with an Intel i7 2600K on an AsusP8P67 LE. Windows 7 x86 booted up as expected on my old IDE drive and I updated the drivers for the components. Then I performed a clean Window7 x64 install on a SATA drive and setup dual boot. Everything works except for some minor annoyances with the hardware (posted elsewhere).

Now, I want to remove the IDE and reduce the number of drives. In other words, the system will not have access to the Windows 7 32 bit boot partition. I may clone the old drive to another partition and maintain the dual booting setup, yet the IDE drive has to go.

My understanding is the MBR is on the IDE drive. So when one removes the IDE drive, the system will no longer boot up into either OS. My goal is to switch the bootloader to the SATA drive and make the partition active. It seems like an easy process. Yet if the system does not boot up, then I am out of luck; and need to start over.

Please let me know if you know of walk through reconfiguring your partitions, EFI, and bootloader. Keep in mind that I hope to keep the dual boot situation while configuring additional components and software. Yet I need to detach the IDE drive for more troubleshooting on the hardware.

 

[ssd-tweak]

Can you check if there is a hidden "system reserved" partition on the SATA drive where you installed the x64 win7? If so, it should contain a MBR, and you should be able to run recovery console if it does not boot without IDE drive attached.

Just try booting without the IDE drive first.

 

[Neville310]

Found the answer with EasyBCD

Recovering the Vista Bootloader with EasyBCD - NeoSmart Technologies Wiki

EasyBCD 2.0
BCD Backup/Repair Section

• Change boot drive
• Point it to C when asked.
• This will copy all the boot files from your old partition to the new one and set it "active".
• Change the BIOS boot sequence if the partitions are on different HDDs
  reboot
• Disk management should now show your new W7 as "Active" "System" "Boot"

 

[ssd-tweak]

Glad you got it solved, and thanks for sharing your solution.

Regards,

tweak