Hardware Windows supposedly relies on two drives to boot.

[gifi4]

So, I went to go create a system image of my SSD onto my external HDD and found out that I would need 1TB of free HDD space to back up. My SSD is only 120GB so I went ahead and checked it out and found out it was also claiming that one of my WD 1TB drives was being included in the system image.

So I did some looking around and everything I've come across relies only on the SSD, not the HDD. System protection relies on the SSD, EasyBCD as well as the default Windows "Startup and Recovery" boot settings all rely on the SSD. The page file relies on the SSD. The only thing I found was that in "Environment Variables", the part with "System Variables" contained a variable on the HDD which happened to be virtualbox, so I uninstalled it, restarted and to no avail. The HDD is no longer in the Variables but the backup still claims it's required for the system image.

Hell, even in Disk Management, the SSD is regarded as pretty much everything (System boot, page file, Crash Dump) The hard drives just have the messages of which partition is the primary one etc. (Only one partition anyway)

I'm not really sure what other information is needed but I'm seriously puzzled as to why the HDD is needed for the system.
Anyone have any clue, at all?

PS. Specs are in sig!

 

[exangel]

Use clonezilla instead of windows to create your system image IMO

 

[Sicklyboy]

Not sure why it would be, but have you tried booting your system without the WD drive in?

 

[Pleng]

I'm guessing that your 1TB drive is the one set to boot from in the BIOS. That being the case then I *think* Windows will have had to install the boot record on that drive, even if the boot record simply directs the computer to the SSD.

 

[gifi4]

Not sure why it would be, but have you tried booting your system without the WD drive in?

Nope, I figured if it's something important I wouldn't really want to try booting without it, guess it could be worth a try...

I'm guessing that your 1TB drive is the one set to boot from in the BIOS. That being the case then I *think* Windows will have had to install the boot record on that drive, even if the boot record simply directs the computer to the SSD.

Nope, the BIOS boot order is the SSD, 1TB drive 1, 1TB drive 2, DVD drive.

Use clonezilla instead of windows to create your system image IMO

Thanks for the suggestion and I may take your advice in the future however I'm still wanting to diagnose this problem first.

 

[Pleng]

Nope, the BIOS boot order is the SSD, 1TB drive 1, 1TB drive 2, DVD drive.

But is that the same order it was in when you installed Windows? If the 1Tb drive was the boot drive when you installed Windows, your system may be trying to boot from SSD, failing, then going onto 1TB, where it is redirected to load Windows from SSD

 

[gifi4]

Not sure why it would be, but have you tried booting your system without the WD drive in?

Just tried it and it booted up. It booted up better as well.
I have fast boot activated(Before as well), skips booting from USB, DVD etc and doesn't show BIOS setting (Unless you hold the power button when booting, causes it to temp turn off) and usually, with the WD drive in, it would have a black screen for about 2 seconds before going to the Windows 7 startup screen (The floating ball thingos) and this time there was no wait and the floating balls disappeared real quick.

But is that the same order it was in when you installed Windows? If the 1Tb drive was the boot drive when you installed Windows, your system may be trying to boot from SSD, failing, then going onto 1TB, where it is redirected to load Windows from SSD

I advise you to read my above response as it provides some helpful info.
I truly can't remember what order the drives were in when I first installed Windows.
However " That being the case then I *think* Windows will have had to install the boot record on that drive, even if the boot record simply directs the computer to the SSD." is what I would say would be the problem, except that it booted fine without the WD drive (better).

 

[Minox]

Those 2 seconds you experience is most likely due to your computer spinning up the HDD so it's ready for usage should anything require to read anything from it.

 

[gifi4]

Those 2 seconds you experience is most likely due to your computer spinning up the HDD so it's ready for usage should anything require to read anything from it.

It only happens with one of the drives in, the other one continues to boot up without any stopping as if only the SSD was plugged in.

 

[gifi4]

Those 2 seconds you experience is most likely due to your computer spinning up the HDD so it's ready for usage should anything require to read anything from it.

To add, I know what my HDD sounds like when it spins up, there is almost no noise coming from either HDD during boot up. Any other ideas? I really want to know what could be causing the Windows Backup problem and the delay in booting.