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Windows 10 will not load from SSD without hard drive

Hello,

Recently I installed a SSD and was able to use both it and a hard drive simultaneously, with the SSD acting as the boot drive.

Yesterday when I turned on my PC Windows failed to stat and the screen advised to restore Windows, which led tot he loss of my files etc. but also resulted in the hard drive becoming the C: drive, instead of the SSD. Furthermore Windows will not start without the hard drive, even though the SSD is still the boot drive on the motherboard.
I tried to run the Samsung Data Mitigation software, believing Windows was loading from the hard drive now, but it did not detect the operating system on the hard drive. So it appears the operating system needs the hard drive in order to boot from the SSD. I also have restricted access, such as not being able to turn on Memory Integrity or reassign drives, despite being an administrator on the PC.

Can you please advise on a solution?

Kind regards,

Answer
Answer

The software you used to copy the c drive to the ssd did not copy all of the partitions from the c drive.

The missing partition and the fact that the ssd partitioning was arranged differently will make the ssd not boot even if you take the c drive out of the pc or disconnect it, the ssd would still be needed to be the first drive connected to the first connector on the motherboard if the ssd has all the partitions present, but it does not, therefore you will get the same errors you are now seeing on pc boot.

The only way to fix this is to either install win10 clean meaning a fresh install where you will 

lose all the data and have to reinstall all your apps or you clone the c drive to the ssd, this will keep all of your data and apps and you will not have to reinstall anything.

If you clone the drive the c drive needs to be the first drive in the system  (disk0)and the ssd (disk1)the second in the system.

After the clone is completed, check to see if all partitions are exactly the same, if they are shut down the pc, switch the motherboard hard drive connectors, restart the pc, go into the bios, make sure the boot order shows first windows boot manager, the ssd and then the c drive, save changes and boot to windows.

For aomeitech to work right on the free standard addition, both the source and target drive need to be the same disk layout, this means if the c drive is gpt so does the d drive.

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Question Info

Last updated December 31, 2023 Views 1,341 Applies to: