Wrong drive is System and Active

Thanks Ray. But it is sometimes difficult for consumers to determine how to plug in their SSD to the port required for best performance while also assuring it's Disk0.

But the point remains: Any preceding primary partition, especially if marked Active, may steal the OS boot files when repairs or reinstall are done. So it's always best to have the OS HD in DIsk0 slot, or if you cannot do this make sure data partitions on DISK0 are Logical which cannot receive System boot files or be made Active.

theog said:

gregrocker said:

madcratebuilder said:

+1

There have been several recent posts about "active" vs "inactive" lately. That prompted me to look at my two drives.

This is incorrect based on everything we know here since before Win7 was even released. Only the OS boot partition should be marked Active to point the installer or repair utility to where the boot files are to be for install or repair. Any other partition marked Active is not only superfluous but can derail the boot files to it - plus it is absolutely unecessary as what reason could possibly exist to have a random non-bootable partition marked Active?

So you'd want to Mark D Partition as Inactive - Windows 7 Forums

Greg, & be on Disk 0.

Why?

whs said:

Allocating the Disk0 port to the OS disk is nice to have - but not a necessity. Very often you do not have that option - e.g. your 6Mb ports for your SSD may be ports 4 & 5 on the mobo. And if you know that, there are many ways to operate with that setup.

+1

That is what I understood. I questioned theog's Disk 0 only comment.

whs said:

Allocating the Disk0 port to the OS disk is nice to have - but not a neccessity. Very often you do not have that option - e.g. your 6Mb ports for your SSD may be ports 4 & 5 on the mobo. And if you know that, there are many ways to operate with that setup.

UEFI Windows Boot Manager on Disk 0 = first Sata port.
Windows 8.1 OS on SSD, Disk 1 = last Sata port.

Which was exactly his point, and mine. It is worth making the effort to have the OS HD is DISK0 to avoid this - but I recognized that this cannot always be done with SSD porting especially.

If not then format all of the data partitions on Disk0 Logical so they cannot have System boot files written to them.

whs said:

Ray, that's normal if you did not disconnect Disk0 when you installed the OS on the SSD. The installer always seems to grab the first disk for the system partition.

NO, this is not normal, the HDD was Pre-reset for the UEFI Windows Boot Manager on Disk 0.
Which you can also do for Legacy install.