My PC Detects My Secondary HDD as The System Disk Instead Of My Primary HDD

I have no idea why would a PC engineer do this but for some reason while he was reinstalling my windows 7 for me he messed up the Sata connections and PC's system disk recognition, I provided couple pictures to help you folks understand my problem.

Before the recent Windows 7 Re-installation, the yellow SATA cable was belonging and plugged into my WDC brand hard drive (F: and E:) while the black SATA cable was plugged into my old childhood Maxtor brand hard drive (D: and C:) but now it's the opposite because of that PC engineer I went to, he switched the WDC's yellow SATA cable with the Maxtor's black SATA cable for some reason I don't know and he didn't mention why I just let him do his job without questioning him, he now made the yellow SATA cable belongs to Maxtor and the black SATA cable belongs to WDC, like why would he change the nature of something was working fine for straight three years until I visited his workshop??? (NOTE: When we bought Maxtor HDD back in 2007 it came with its own SATA black cable both were shipped together as the same product)

Heads Up: I have two hard drives, the primary HDD is Maxtor brand (D: and C:) while the secondary HDD is WDC brand (F: and E:), just to make things clear...

I told that PC engineer to install windows 7 on my Maxtor where as you can see in the picture is the bottom one (D: and C:) with the Yellow SATA plugged into it, when my PC boots up it recognizes the secondary hard drive brand WDC (F: and E:) with the black SATA plugged into it as a SYSTEM disk and not the Maxtor primary hard drive, I have to unplug my Maxtor first and boot up my pc with the WDC only plugged alone just to wait for the boot message saying "no system disks found please reboot" and there I plug back my Maxtor and reboot my PC then it works and reads both together, I know about the boot menu thing I chose Maxtor from there as a first device to boot up but it didn't do any good and my PC still reads WDC as a system disk instead of Maxtor and requires it to be read before Maxtor, and not just that but if i do the same trick with the SATA cables switched like how they originally were before my windows 7 Re-installation by plugging the yellow SATA into WDC and the black SATA into Maxtor the pc will refuse to read my hard drives at all no matter what even if i plug WDC first before Maxtor, Windows 7 files and folder are located in C: disk I've checked it myself and still I can't figure out what's wrong?

Why would a PC enginner do that? any tips and solutions of how to fix this and make it work like how it was intedned to be like before this mess? I just want my PC to detect my hard drive Maxtor (D: and C:) first as the system disk without depending on hard drive WDC (F: and E:) in the boot up just in case if my WDC hard drive dies or power supply IDE cables wear out I won't have to reinstall my Windows 7 again, and also if you guys know how to make it work with the yellow SATA for WDC and the black SATA for Maxtor that would be greatly appreciated cuz i see no Youtube videos about that and that PC engineer refused to help me with that at the time making an excuse of being BUSY not having time to fix it expecting me to comeback again later in a next time for it...never gonna go back to him ever again

thanks for all the time and help you guys giving me, I'm a student and these forums are my only last hope since PC engineers now these days they get paid and give you half the service and effort LOL

_______________________
EXTRA INFO:

C: is for my windows and appdata
D: Is for minecraft, emulators, media and software
F: is for videogames
E: is totally useless and it's empty

Why would anybody still want to use Windows 7 it is not secure.

Hello @TenAte108 and welcome to ElevenForums.


You should be posting this on SevenForums.


Honestly, you should consider getting a new computer. Windows 7 is way past it's "End of Life" and is no longer supported by Microsoft. You can pick up a new computer with Windows 11 for a fairly decent price these days.
It will be miles faster, and far more secure.

I don't know what country you hail from, but by way of example...

This list is sorted by lowest price first. Personally, I would look in the $450.00 and up range, at the bare minimum.

I agree with @Ghot. Even if you can't get a new PC, there are a lot of refurbished 8th and 9th generation core Windows 11 compatible machines with the Windows 11 Pro already installed. They are Amazon certified sellers. They run as low as $250USD, at least they are available here in the US.

gmcgee78 said:

Why would anybody still want to use Windows 7 it is not secure.

Click to expand...

What does this have to do with my question and topic?

I use windows 7 cuz it's the best OS for running old software and games and I can't afford to run this generation games with Windows 11, it's not that easy as you think, there is of course a Reason why I chose Windows 7 and not XP or 95 LOL

Windows 7 runs old PC videogames flawlessly with no launch issues or bugs or compatibility problems and a friend of mine recommended me this himself, Can't afford to run the new games? then I can run old games, and what's the best OS for running old games until 2014 it's of course the notorious Windows 7 also Windows 7 is not that bad and I didn't run through any security issues, I've fixed my PC back in 2019 and it worked fine for straight 3 years haven't complained once about the OS and I'm happy with it

Consider me not have mentioned I use Windows 7

glasskuter said:

I agree with @Ghot. Even if you can't get a new PC, there are a lot of refurbished 8th and 9th generation core Windows 11 compatible machines with the Windows 11 Pro already installed. They are Amazon certified sellers. They run as low as $250USD, at least they are available here in the US.

Click to expand...

My Currency is EGP not USD, the price you are talking about is near 8 thousand pounds here which is worth of three months of salary in my job, why would I work for three months to get a PC???? also that includes my bills and taxes and rent so ain't no way I could buy that PC from amazon like how you are mentioning there

I'm not here looking for shopping or PC parts or freeload hardware I'm here asking about how do I fix this boot thing it has nothing to do with what windows version I'm using...

Ghot said:

Hello @TenAte108 and welcome to ElevenForums.


You should be posting this on SevenForums.

Windows 7 Help Forums

Honestly, you should consider getting a new computer. Windows 7 is way past it's "End of Life" and is no longer supported by Microsoft. You can pick up a new computer with Windows 11 for a fairly decent price these days.
It will be miles faster, and far more secure.

I don't know what country you hail from, but by way of example...

This list is sorted by lowest price first. Personally, I would look in the $450.00 and up range, at the bare minimum.

New,Windows 11 Desktop Computers | Newegg.com

Shop New,Windows 11 Desktop Computers on Newegg.com. Watch for amazing deals and get great pricing.

www.newegg.com

Click to expand...

First, Windows 7 forums are not available anymore and refuses to sign me up, that's why I'm posting here I tried creating an account there but it says "signing up is not available currently" or something like that

Second, If I could get a new PC with supported OS I would have done it

Third, How is this gonna fix my boot disk problem?

TenAte108, it sounds to me like the technician who worked on your pc either did not fully understand what you wanted done or did not bother to completely check things out before turning the computer back over to you. I would take it back and have the corrections made.

You do pose a question I have that I think about often. A good portion of the MS users around the world are still using old pc's and old software because they simply do not nave the disposable money to just run out and get a new pc over other more pressing needs. I keep wondering, what is going to be the effect overall after Windows 10 ends support in a few years and Windows 11 becomes unable to be supported on old pc's?

ITenAte108. It is very easy to lose sight of the situation of others and I am guilty of that. I sincerely apologize.
You say the color cables have been swapped. The color of the cable does not matter. What matters is that the cable connected to the drive where windows is installed and where the correct boot loader is located must be connected to a port 0 on the motherboard and your bios must point to that drive as your first boot device.
You may not be familiar with the bios so first attempt to swap the connections of the 2 drives ONLY on the motherboard end and see if your can boot. Are you successful?

I just last month replaced my w7 machine HDD, as those disks failed being 10 plus years old. Maxtor drives are ancient, they merged with Seagate ages ago. I would not reinstall anything on such an old HDD. I had a Maxtor drive back in 2010. As just suggested which cables don't matter just change the boot order in bios. My w7 pc is still running fine but now triple boots with W10 and Linux on different disks. Not my daily driver but I love that PC.

glasskuter said:

ITenAte108. It is very easy to lose sight of the situation of others and I am guilty of that. I sincerely apologize.
You say the color cables have been swapped. The color of the cable does not matter. What matters is that the cable connected to the drive where windows is installed and where the correct boot loader is located must be connected to a port 0 on the motherboard and your bios must point to that drive as your first boot device.
You may not be familiar with the bios so first attempt to swap the connections of the 2 drives ONLY on the motherboard end and see if your can boot. Are you successful?

Click to expand...

What glasskuter says about port 0 happened to me back when I first installed a new ssd in addition to my old hdd. It was an easy thing to fix. In my case, I had the case open when I tested the new install and just swapped the cables going into the ssd and hdd.

It may be "drive type" dependent but I don't believe it matters the port the OS drive is on, but rather the drive be recognized as the boot drive, regardless of port#. Here my OS drive (NVMe) is on port 3...



BIOS wise, I only needed to insure the BIOS sees my NVMe drive as the primary boot drive. In a UEFI BIOS this would be automatic anyway, unless you wanted a different boot device... say a thumb drive for OS install.

glasskuter said:

ITenAte108. It is very easy to lose sight of the situation of others and I am guilty of that. I sincerely apologize.
You say the color cables have been swapped. The color of the cable does not matter. What matters is that the cable connected to the drive where windows is installed and where the correct boot loader is located must be connected to a port 0 on the motherboard and your bios must point to that drive as your first boot device.
You may not be familiar with the bios so first attempt to swap the connections of the 2 drives ONLY on the motherboard end and see if your can boot. Are you successful?

Click to expand...

It's okay :)

Right now I have the Yellow SATA plugged in Maxtor and the Black SATA plugged in WDC, If I switch them back to how they normally were like before this windows 7 installation (Black to Maxtor and Yellow to WDC) the PC will refuse to read both for the boot up and it will leave me stuck on "no system disks were found" so this PC engineer guy left me stuck on keeping the yellow SATA for WDC and the black SATA for Maxtor I have no idea why??? that's just weird even though I didn't order him to that and I didn't want to interrupt him cuz If I did interrupt him on what was he doing in front of me he will act like I'm stopping him from defusing a bomb and say I don't know his job and blah blah blah all that stuff Genius people say to put on the coat of majesty

the problem here is not the PC engineer the problem is how to bring back the situation the SATA cables were like before and how to make my PC boot up with Maxtor without depending on the secondary new volume hard drive WDC (E: and F: as show in the pics)

All what I'm trying to do right now is bring things back to normal after his mess, from what I remember before that Maxtor was called Ch0 M in the boot menu before now it's called CH1 M

mackie said:

TenAte108, it sounds to me like the technician who worked on your pc either did not fully understand what you wanted done or did not bother to completely check things out before turning the computer back over to you. I would take it back and have the corrections made.

You do pose a question I have that I think about often. A good portion of the MS users around the world are still using old pc's and old software because they simply do not nave the disposable money to just run out and get a new pc over other more pressing needs. I keep wondering, what is going to be the effect overall after Windows 10 ends support in a few years and Windows 11 becomes unable to be supported on old pc's?

Click to expand...

Yes exactly he didn't bother to try things out and now I'm paying for this consequence

and yeah i will keep using windows 7 until i get new PC

reece said:

I just last month replaced my w7 machine HDD, as those disks failed being 10 plus years old. Maxtor drives are ancient, they merged with Seagate ages ago. I would not reinstall anything on such an old HDD. I had a Maxtor drive back in 2010. As just suggested which cables don't matter just change the boot order in bios. My w7 pc is still running fine but now triple boots with W10 and Linux on different disks. Not my daily driver but I love that PC.

Click to expand...

well basically a new hard drive that is brand new never got touched before costs 2,500 EGP's and that's probably a tyra or two, I couldn't afford that so I told him to install windows 7 on my hard drive Maxtor since it works solid to this day and I never faced problems with, it's this WDC that is being slow even though I bought it used in 2019 again for the same reason cuz I couldn't afford brand new

Dru2 said:

It may be "drive type" dependent but I don't believe it matters the port the OS drive is on, but rather the drive be recognized as the boot drive, regardless of port#. Here my OS drive (NVMe) is on port 3...

View attachment 66049

BIOS wise, I only needed to insure the BIOS sees my NVMe drive as the primary boot drive. In a UEFI BIOS this would be automatic anyway, unless you wanted a different boot device... say a thumb drive for OS install.

Click to expand...

it says first device

E: is empty for me and it's a partition from WDC hard drive both F: and E: are the same hard drive, it's only F: I use from that hard drive, E: is basically a 500 megabytes which I open I find nothing in it yet it says a little bit occupying the partition

I just want my SATA cables to be back to which hard drives they belonged to while fixing this issue of requiring WDC hard drive to be plugged first before Maxtor in order to boot up, it's weird cuz Maxtor is what contains Windows 7 not WDC

I tried unplugging WDC but the system refused to open at all, so i have to unplug Maxtor, reboot and wait for the no system disks found message and there I plug the Maxtor and reboot again and that way it will work, it's only two hard drives I own

It sounds to me that they somehow installed the boot loader on the wrong drive. As for you switching the cables, are you switching both ends or just the ends on the drive. If it is possible someone might be able to tell you how to move the boot partition. If not you may need to do a clean install of Windows 7. If you do, only connect the drive you want to install Windows 7 on. Before doing anything I would talk to the tech. Being that they set it up wrong they may fix it for free.

TenAte108 said:

it says first device

E: is empty for me and it's a partition from WDC hard drive both F: and E: are the same hard drive, it's only F: I use from that hard drive, E: is basically a 500 megabytes which I open I find nothing in it yet it says a little bit occupying the partition

I just want my SATA cables to be back to which hard drives they belonged to while fixing this issue of requiring WDC hard drive to be plugged first before Maxtor in order to boot up, it's weird cuz Maxtor is what contains Windows 7 not WDC

I tried unplugging WDC but the system refused to open at all, so i have to unplug Maxtor, reboot and wait for the no system disks found message and there I plug the Maxtor and reboot again and that way it will work, it's only two hard drives I own

Click to expand...

I'm not sure you understood my post.

Anyway, and for clarity, if a drive is divided (Partitioned) into multiple drives, it is STILL seen as one disk, assigned to one port.

If all you own are two drives, simply plug the WDC drive into port 0, and the Maxter into port 1. After that simply tell the BIOS to boot off the WDC drive. Of course, the drive would have to be the OS drive.

Reading your first post why not just contact the person who worked on your PC?

BTW, those images you post are hard to read seeing how small they are. How are you posting your images?

Winuser said:

It sounds to me that they somehow installed the boot loader on the wrong drive. As for you switching the cables, are you switching both ends or just the ends on the drive. If it is possible someone might be able to tell you how to move the boot partition. If not you may need to do a clean install of Windows 7. If you do, only connect the drive you want to install Windows 7 on. Before doing anything I would talk to the tech. Being that they set it up wrong they may fix it for free.

Click to expand...

sadly no he won't admit that he was wrong all they know is money, but I agree with your point here I looked in many different places on the internet and I read that I might need a clean windows 7 re-installation with only the hard drive I need it on it, and only after the reinstallation I plug in the hard drives I want, that's good thinking to save us all that trouble.

but isn't that way the PC gonna detect two bootloaders? on WDC and Maxtor, the system reserved partition in the new hard drive WDC will just remain there? reinstalling windows 7 will create a system reserved on Maxtor that way am I not gonna have two system reserved partitions? how is that gonna work?

Dru2 said:

I'm not sure you understood my post.

Anyway, and for clarity, if a drive is divided (Partitioned) into multiple drives, it is STILL seen as one disk, assigned to one port.

If all you own are two drives, simply plug the WDC drive into port 0, and the Maxter into port 1. After that simply tell the BIOS to boot off the WDC drive. Of course, the drive would have to be the OS drive.

Reading your first post why not just contact the person who worked on your PC?

BTW, those images you post are hard to read seeing how small they are. How are you posting your images?

Click to expand...

Sure I understood what you mean I know my partitions were, the old hard drive Maxtor was supposed to be disk 0 because I had it before the new volume hard drive WDC, as you can see in the picture it says now Maxtor is DIsk 1 and WDC is disk 0, doesn't that mean that the PC thinks WDC was detected before Maxtor?

Anyway, on Maxtor there is supposed to be 50 gigabytes for C: partition that has windows 7 installed on it of course and the 100 gigabytes (which are 98 actually) are for D: partition that has my personal stuff, on WDX however I remember it had F: partition with 450 gigabytes for my personal stuff and E: partition that just lays there empty appearing in My Computer with nothing occupying it.

But now...after I went to that PC engineer who clearly knows nothing about how to install a windows OS properly, he flipped my entire world in my computer and made Maxtor disk 1 and WDC disk 0 and not just that but also he made a "system reserved" partition appear out of nowhere in one of my WDC's partitions as you can see in the picture of disk managment which I suspect it was the empty E: partition from before the reinstallation and now the new E: partition belongs to Maxtor and it's completely empty which I think this one parition is what was supposed to contain the system reserved bootloader thing, I wish if there was a way I can take the bootloader from WDC's old E: partition to Maxtor's old E: parition and replace them so the old E: can be empty again like how it usually was