Unusual Boot Issue

[Scoob]

Hey all,

Not so long ago I upgraded my PC drives. Before the upgrade it had:

1x Corsair Neutron GTX 240gb SSD - partitioned as System (W7) and Games.
1x Kingston SSD Now 120gb - spare SSD I added in for extra (fast) storage
1xSamsung Spinpoint 1tb - main data drive / games that don't need an SSD

This system worked nicely. However, a couple of month ago I did a bit of an upgrade. Scan had a special offer on the Kingston 120gb SSD's, so I bought two. I removed ALL drives from my system, popped the two new SSD's in RAID0 using my motherboards two Intel SATA 6g ports.

Setup was a breeze, BIOS handled RAID setup. Popped W8.1 on there this time and I was all up and running with a VERY fast little system. Drives partitioned for system and games.

I popped the Samsung Spinpoint back in on one of the Intel 3g ports - plenty fast enough for it - so I still had good data capacity.

As my old Corsair Neutron and the other Kingston 120gb SSD's had no other homes to go to I popped them back in the PC. Upon adding the Corsair back in (which had my old W7 build) on one of the Marvel ports (yeah, I know, but still faster than an Intel 3g) my Windows 8.1 boot screen gained an option to Boot into W7 - quite cool, I can flip between each build at a whim...useful to checking any compatibility issues in W8.1 of course.

So, have used this system for a couple of months over which it's been running perfectly, very fast, silent and cool. However, I got an old second hand laptop the other day with (among other things) a duff HDD, so I thought I'd rob the Corsair Neutron.

I removed it and, as a sanity check, fired up the PC to ensure I'd not knocked anything loose accidentally. I was surprised when I got the "insert boot device" message! I checked all cables and all was fine. To cut some boring trial and error short, only popping the Corsair back in would enable the PC to boot. Without it, it could not boot from my RAID0 array Kingston 120's.

So, considering this system was built initially with JUST the RAID0 pair installed, why would it now refused to boot without the Corsair in play? Has some internal setting made it expect the 2nd (W7) boot option to be there now? The odd thing is that the Marvell ports are NOT bootable according to the manual.

In the end I robbed the spare Kingston SSD for the laptop and it's working great. Would have preferred the 240gb Corsair for it though as it's faster as well as double the size - wasn't an option though.

So, anyone else experienced anything like this? A separate W8.1 install somehow becoming non-bootable when an unrelated (to the system) drive on a separate non-bootable controller is removed? System is per spec below, bar my drive changes.

Confuzzled me this one did!

Scoob.

 

[agent_x007]

Check Boot Sequence.
Probably SSD "hijacked" 1-st spot when it was connected.
Change setting to what was in it when U were installing Windows on RAID.

If it won't do any good, u will probably need to do a boot recovery (on RAID Windows).

 

[Scoob]

Check Boot Sequence.
Probably SSD "hijacked" 1-st spot when it was connected.
Change setting to what was in it when U were installing Windows on RAID.

If it won't do any good, u will probably need to do a boot recovery (on RAID Windows).

First thing I checked, drive was 3rd in the sequence (after the two RAID partitions) which is odd in its self as the Corsair is on a separate non-bootable Marvel controller. Personally I think the manual is wrong and it's fully bootable.

When the RAID partitions alone are listed in the boot order, I get the "no boot device" issue. It's most odd.

Scoob.

 

[Warchild]

maybe the pc is searching for the boot loader on the Corsair?

You stated that you removed the drives from your system, but did you wipe the data off the Corsair? Has to be a conflict or a file that has been stored on your Corsair isntead of your RAID0 config.

 

[Scoob]

Could be. Though why it would do this I don't know. Also, system was working fine without the Corsair initially but adding it back in has upset something. I mean, the system does not physically boot from the Corsair, it just needs it to be there. If, when given the option, I select "Windows 7" rather than the Default "Windows 8.1" option the computer has to restart to get into 7. If however I select the W8.1 option iI'm on the Start page within 2 seconds - so, basically, it is already in W8.1.

I cannot even force it to boot of the array via motherboard startup options as it considers the device non-bootable - which is plain wrong.

I'm guessing this is some weird quirk/bug on the motherboard.

I will eventually just rebuild the system entirely sans the corsair (like before) but not add it in again. It only takes a few minute to install W8.1, a few minutes more to add in the tools I use etc.

Funny thing is I've run dual boot setups like this before on this very system without issue. Indeed, the Samsung Spinpoint 1tb drive still has the old W7 partition on it and I used to be able to dual boot between that and the then new Corsair SSD.

Scoob.