Windows won't boot with 2 hard drives installed.

Hello,

I have built my own custom computer about a month and a half ago. Today, I received a 2nd hard drive, same make, different model, same size as the other one. They are both western digital.

When one hard drive is installed, my main one, boots fine.

When I have both hard drives in, the computer will crash, and when i try to boot, it won't.

PC Specs:

AMD Phenom II X4 965 3.4GHz
8 GB DDR3 1333 RAM
500 GB Western Digital Hard Drive
Gigabyte Motherboard GA-880GA-UD3H
Radeon 6870 HD

Any thing else you need, please just ask.

Was there an operating system on the 2nd drive, or did you buy it new?

What happens if you only have your second drive attached, if it has no OS it won't try to boot but does it still crash your system or will it post so you can go into the bios? (If it does have an old OS it will probably post and then crash when it attempts to start the OS due to incompatible drivers).

Ah yes, sorry should have included some more information.

There was no operating system on the 2nd drive, it was purchased new.

The hard drives are being connected through sata.

Also, I have not tried just having the 2nd drive in, never really thought about it, but I will give it a shot, and post back what happens.

-Thanks for responses.

Newly added drives sometimes changes the boot device order in the BIOS. Try selecting the boot device with your OS manually. If it works just change which drive is first in the boot order of the BIOS

So it didn't crash if it asked for the BOOTMGR, which is expected as you have no OS on it. That tells me that the drive is okay, and you also changed cables so that isn't the issue.

Try attaching the new drive to the GSATA controller, which will have to be enabled in the bios probably, and your boot drive to the SATA0 port.

Yup, the two white are GSATA and usually cannot support a boot drive but may isolate the other drive from the problem you are having.

Hmmmm.

When both drives are connected will it even post so you can get into the bios to insure that the boot drive is correct? If not, I only have one unusual idea left:

I have actually never heard of this issue in a situation like yours, but the only thing that comes to mind is a drive signature collision -- although I have never seen it outside of external drives? Take a look at this: http://www.howtohaven.com/system/c [...] ture.shtml

If you can install the drive in another computer and check its ID and compare to the boot drive you would know for sure. You could also initialize and format the drive on another computer.