Boot drive other than C:

[Saearrin]

Tried to replace some HDs, and found out that my boot drive isn't my drive C:, meaning I can't boot without having both connected. Wtf do I do now? Didn't even knew this was possible.

[ouroesa]

Your MBR (Master Boot Record) is almost always located on your C drive. This is where your BIOS is hard coded to look in and start the boot sequence. Hence, If you remove your C drive, the next drive will become your C drive and if it has no MBR, you will get a boot error (usually no OS/boot device found). Easiest way to deal with this is to rebuild the MBR on the same drive that your OS is installed and make that your C drive - refer to https://www.partitionwizard.com/help/rebuild-mbr.html

 

Good luck

[Saearrin]

1 minute ago, ouroesa said:

Your MBR (Master Boot Record) is almost always located on your C drive. This is where your BIOS is hard coded to look in and start the boot sequence. Hence, If you remove your C drive, the next drive will become your C drive and if it has no MBR, you will get a boot error (usually no OS/boot device found). Easiest way to deal with this is to rebuild the MBR on the same drive that your OS is installed and make that your C drive - refer to https://www.partitionwizard.com/help/rebuild-mbr.html

 

Good luck

Tried doing that, didn't work. My PC is treating the drive with Windows installed as a secondary drive for some reason.

[ouroesa]

It has the MBR on disc 0 which should be on disc 1, this is what happens when you rebuild the MBR. 

 

Swap the connectors on the motherboard and give it another go, but is should be fine regardless as you can choose which drive to build the MBR on IIRC

[Saearrin]

1 minute ago, ouroesa said:

It has the MBR on disc 0 which should be on disc 1, this is what happens when you rebuild the MBR. 

 

Swap the connectors on the motherboard and give it another go, but is should be fine regardless as you can choose which drive to build the MBR on IIRC

Thing is, I already tried booting it with disc 0 phisically disconnected from the PC, and I couldn't rebuild the MBR, even using a flash drive with windows installer. It said access denied. And if I try to boot disc 1 directly, it says that no OS was found, though I'm using it right now.

 

Will swapping the connectors on the mobo fix this? Seems weird to be that simple considering what I said above.

[ouroesa]

Makes sense that you get the error when trying to boot from disk 1 as it has no MBR, this is what your are trying to remediate.

 

If you swap the connectors, remove the non-os drive and then use the usb to rebuild the MBR, it should work. You can also try cloning the MBR partition from disk 0 to disk 1 but it is a pain in the ass and you will more than likely loose data

[Saearrin]

2 minutes ago, ouroesa said:

Makes sense that you get the error when trying to boot from disk 1 as it has no MBR, this is what your are trying to remediate.

 

If you swap the connectors, remove the non-os drive and then use the usb to rebuild the MBR, it should work. You can also try cloning the MBR partition from disk 0 to disk 1 but it is a pain in the ass and you will more than likely loose data

Will try repairing it using the USB then, hopefully the result won't be the same as the one I got last time.

 

Would cloning the MBR partition from disc 0 and the entire disc 1 to another drive fix it? I have spare HDDs if needed.

[ouroesa]

You'll have to clone at least the system reserved partition from disk 0 to disc 1 and then edit it to look for the OS on that same disk and hope it works. Last ditch effort. 

[Saearrin]

27 minutes ago, ouroesa said:

Makes sense that you get the error when trying to boot from disk 1 as it has no MBR, this is what your are trying to remediate.

 

If you swap the connectors, remove the non-os drive and then use the usb to rebuild the MBR, it should work. You can also try cloning the MBR partition from disk 0 to disk 1 but it is a pain in the ass and you will more than likely loose data

It worked. Thanks for the help.

[ouroesa]

5 minutes ago, Saearrin said:

It worked. Thanks for the help.

Glad to hear! Pass on what you've learnt.