Member Avatar for mIzDa_cHuBz

I have two hard drives, one is sata. I want the one that is sata to be the default one my computer starts up on. How do I change my other hard drive being default?

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asked the right question: what do you mean by "default" — the drive that holds Windows, or the drive the PC actually boots from first? suggested changing the boot order in firmware, which is one option, but there are safer OS-level steps that let the SATA disk become the drive the system uses to start Windows without touching firmware settings.

Check what Windows currently marks as the System and Boot disks by opening Disk Management (run diskmgmt.msc). The partition labelled "System" holds the boot files; the one labelled "Boot" contains the running Windows. If the SATA disk already contains Windows but is not the System disk, copy the boot files to it and register them so the machine can start from that disk. With Windows tools you can:

  • Mark the Windows partition on the SATA disk active (use Disk Management or diskpart) if the machine uses legacy MBR-style booting.
  • Use bcdboot to install the Windows boot files onto the SATA disk (for example bcdboot C:\Windows /s S: where S: is the EFI or system partition), which creates the correct Boot Configuration Data on that disk.

If Windows was installed only on the other drive, clone the OS to the SATA disk (use a reliable cloning tool), then use the steps above so the SATA disk has both the OS and the boot files. Always back up important data before changing partitions or running repair commands. For Windows-specific commands and details about bcdboot and Boot Configuration Data, see Microsoft's documentation on bcdboot and BCDEdit.

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Member Avatar for mechbas

Aaaaand, your other drive being what?

Member Avatar for darsh999

Well you can use only one hard drive as a default at a time you can do this by doing setting in bios...

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