SOLVED Two Operating Systems

[toxin9]

hey everyone. i recently bought my first ssd. so naturally i wanted to format my drives and install my operating system on the ssd. basically since it's a new drive for the computer i installed windows 10 without deleting my windows 7 first so i have 2 operating system that i have to choose from when i start up my computer-in different drives. i wanted to format the other discs now in the easy way in the control panel but it doesn't let me format the old drive saying: "windows cannot format the system partition on the disk".
well to simulate what it would be like if i formatted that dist i just unpluged it and tried to start windows. so i disconnected the hard drive (not formatted) and turned on my computer. the computer couldn't load the operating system without that drive so i tried puting it back and the computer still couldn't boot. so i put the windows 10 usb and reformatted the whole system, but this time before installing the system i formated BOTH the ssd and the hard drive so they were both empty. in the middle of the installation the computer needed to reset and when it did it crashed again

. so i disconnected the driver and kept only the ssd in there and continued with the installation of windows 10. everything is fine now but i'm afraid to plug it back i don't want to have to format and reinstall my windows 10 again.... what should i do?

 

[Trouble]

The solution is relatively easy if you have a means to connect the drive externally while Windows 10 is running from your SSD, either by using an eSATA or USB interface cable and power cable.
You can then, very carefully use an Admin Command prompt and DiskPart to "Clean" the drive.
I suspect that the drive still contains an EFI or MBR (system partition) and is set to "active" and that may be what is causing your issue. You need to address that.

Failing that you could
Remove your SSD with your Windows 10 install from the system and set it aside.
Reattach the spinner and boot the system with something like, http://www.partitionwizard.com/free-partition-manager.html
Use that to wipe the drive of any partitions and format it entirely as a data drive using NTFS, if that is something you're reasonably comfortable doing.

 

[Mike Kingsbury]

Hi

I did what you did recently, and put a SSD in my computer to install Windows 10 on.

What I did was unplug both of my other hard drives so that only the SSD was connected when I did the install.

When I was done and Windows 10 was booting to the SSD, I plugged the other Windows drive back in and Windows completely ignored it.

Once I was sure that it would boot OK, I used Drive Manager to format and remove the old Windows 10 drive.
Then I extended the other partition on my drive to absorb it.

If you computer is booting now, without the other drive plugged in, then it should be safe to plug it back in.
The worst that could happen is that it wouldn't boot and you'd have to unplug it again.

But I don't think that's going to happen, you obviously have a boot partition on the SSD, or it wouldn't boot.
And since it is booting it isn't looking for the other one.

For future reference, in a dual boot situation it's necessary to remove one of the operating systems boot options before removing the OS, as you found.

You can use a program like EasyBCD to edit the boot menu and remove the OS you don't want from the list, and then, after making sure that you computer boots without it, remove it from your computer.

Mike

Hi Trouble

 

[Trouble]

As long as you understand the difference between SATA 0 and SATA 1, 2, and 3 etc., on your motherboard
AND
As long as your boot order / boot menu is not defaulting to the spinner. That will probably be OK
AND
I'm not sure what

I used Drive Manager

IS but, .....
Disk Management (right click the start button and choose it from the context menu should also be OK.

 

[Mike Kingsbury]

Hi

Yes, I meant Disk Management, (confusing with Device Manager) that's the problem with being 77. LOL

Glad to hear you got it fixed.

Mike

 

[toxin9]

thanks! managed to fix it. simply connected the drive while the computer was already on (so it won't try to boot from it). then the only thing i had to do since i already formatted it was make it inactive. i used diskpart to make it inactive and everything is ok now.
thanks a lot for the help!