Solved Secondary hard drive is dying, but how do I swap it out for another?

[redjeep]

I have an SSD for C drive, operating system on that and then I have 2 Seagate 2GB hard drives that I keep movies and TV shows, one is D: and the other is E:
Well D is the one that is dying, so I bought another, back up my stuff and thought I could just pull the cables on it and plug in the new one, but noooooooo, the pc wouldn't even boot
Any suggestions?

Ok, I think I see why it will not boot, the D: drive has the system reserve on it? Right?

Anyway I getting rid of this?

 

[AddRAM]

First, you must mark Disk 2 (C) Active, then

unplug Disk 0 and Disk 1, then

run startup repair until Disk 2 (C) boots on it`s own.

When you installed windows on the ssd, you should not have had the other 2 drives plugged in.

 

[redjeep]

addram, thanks man, worked perfect, Im all good!!

 

[gregrocker]

In addition if you plan to keep the old drive attached at all you need to delete the old System Reserved partition or at least mark it Inactive so it can't interfere.

To do this follow these steps to Mark Partition as Inactive - Windows 7 Forums,
then in Disk Mgmt delete the old System Reserved partition.

If the old drive is dying then I'd move its data off and unplug it, swap it's cable to the SSD so no future reinstalls or repairs can accidentally derail the System Boot files to the first primary partition as they will. Just make sure the Win7 drive remains set as first HD to boot in BIOS setup.

 

[AddRAM]

Excellent, but you should finish up by following Greg`s further advice