Tale of two hard drives - one boots, the other has Win7 on it?

bryanska · 11 Feb 2011

I installed Win7 on an old XP machine, intending to put Win7 on one HDD, and use the other for media storage.

I've been using Win7 for about three weeks. Today I tried to determine which HDD had Win7 on it. In order to do this, I figured I'd unplug the SATA from one, then the other, and see which one booted Win7.

When I pulled one, I got the "BOOTMGR missing" error in the BIOS startup screen. When I pulled the other, I got a "system missing" error in what looked like Win7 font on a black screen.

Windows will only boot when both hard drives are connected. The generic drive has first boot priority.

I only have one drive letter -- C: The other drive is formatted but not mapped.

This is the limit of my expertise. Pasted below is a screenshot of Disk manager. Does anybody have any idea why I can't pull the non-Windows hard drive from the system?

Maguscreed · 11 Feb 2011

Seems pretty obvious, the install deposited the bootmgr on physical disc 0 and the operating system on the drive you designated as C:

At least that's the way I'm reading into this problem. In response to what you are apparently trying to figure out. The disc that was removed when you got the system missing message, should be the disc windows 7 is actually located on.

As for a fix to this problem, I'll leave that up to someone else, I'm not properly read up on win 7 installation changes.

TVeblen · 11 Feb 2011

Hello bryanska. Welcome to the Forum.

Disk 0 has the Master Boot Record on it. This is the actual hard drive that you disconnected and then got the "BOOTMGR missing" message.

Disk 1 has the W7 files. This is the actual hard drive that you disconnected and then got the ""system missing"" message.

You want to have only Disk 1 connected. Disconnect Disk 0 and any External Drive.
Then run "Startup Repair" from your W7 installation disk by booting with the disk in the CD/DVD drive (Bios set to boot from CD first):
Startup Repair
Or make a "Repair Disk" from within Windows and boot from that:
System Repair Disc - Create

You may need to run Startup Repair 3 Times to repair the Startup files and correct your installation.

For others: Always disconnect all drives except the drive you will be installing W7 onto to avoid this kind of problem. (Connect the CD/DVD. of course!)

TVeblen · 11 Feb 2011

You will need to unmark Disk 0 as an Active partition and delete the Boot Manager before reconnecting the drive and booting with it connected.

You may be able to boot into Windows and do this using Disk Management, but I'm not sure about that. Maybe someone else here knows.

A sure way to do it is using DISKPART from the System Recovery Options:

Disconnect Disk 1 and Connect Disk 0 then Boot with the Installation DVD or Repair Disk again.

Select command prompt
Type DISKPART (press ENTER after each entry)
Type LIST DISK
Type SELECT DISK n (n should be the only disk)
Type LIST PARTITION
Type SELECT PARTITION n (n should be the only partition)
Type INACTIVE
Type FORMAT [QUICK]
Type EXIT to exit DISKPART
Type EXIT again to exit the command prompt

Now you can reconnect everything and Boot.

Hope that helps.

theog · 12 Feb 2011

Warning: Make sure you backup your Data first.

You may need to copy boot files from Disk 0 to your Disk 1,
1) Make sure you have these files on the Windows 7 partition.

Tale of two hard drives - one boots, the other has Win7 on it?-capture1.png

Tale of two hard drives - one boots, the other has Win7 on it?-capture2.png

Tale of two hard drives - one boots, the other has Win7 on it?-capture3.png

2) Remove Disk 0 & replace with disk 1

3) Than do a startup repair.
Startup Repair
Note: You may need to do startup repair 3 to 4 times.

When booting OK.
4) Refit the old disk 0 as disk 1 & mark inactive
Partition - Mark as Active

1Bowtie · 12 Feb 2011

Since you have nothing on the New Volumn drive just rt click and delete the volumn then unplug that drive, using the Win 7 dvd do a system repair and your back in business, plug in the second drive, use disk mgmt and set up the second drive and it will become D:

bryanska · 21 Feb 2011

TVeblen said:

Hello bryanska. Welcome to the Forum.

Disk 0 has the Master Boot Record on it. This is the actual hard drive that you disconnected and then got the "BOOTMGR missing" message.

Disk 1 has the W7 files. This is the actual hard drive that you disconnected and then got the ""system missing"" message.

You want to have only Disk 1 connected. Disconnect Disk 0 and any External Drive.
Then run "Startup Repair" from your W7 installation disk by booting with the disk in the CD/DVD drive (Bios set to boot from CD first):
Startup Repair
Or make a "Repair Disk" from within Windows and boot from that:
System Repair Disc - Create

You may need to run Startup Repair 3 Times to repair the Startup files and correct your installation.

For others: Always disconnect all drives except the drive you will be installing W7 onto to avoid this kind of problem. (Connect the CD/DVD. of course!)

I tried this approach and it worked!!! Thanks so much for the advice. First I deleted the partition on the drive with the boot installed. Then I followed your procedure. It worked very smoothly.

Then I was able to reformat the spare drive. I installed it into my HTPC.

By the way, HUGE side benefit: my fresh Win 7 install was super slow before. It would lag, the cursor would disappear, and hard drive write times were ridiculously slow. Installs would take twenty minutes. But with the second drive gone, everything is speedy now! Things work as they should.

Thanks for the help, everyone.

TVeblen · 21 Feb 2011

Congrats! Glad you got it sorted out.

bryanska · 22 Feb 2011

Ah shoot, the PC is still slow and laggy. Dang, I'll have to post that in another section.