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#1
Can't boot from SSD with my Windows install without secondary HDD
My PC is a real mix of old and new parts and I currently have a problem where my 2TB mechanical HDD is failing. It is 100% active all the time, but frequently hangs or simply takes forever to browse or transfer any files, so I'm pretty sure it is on the way out. When I remove that HDD however, I can't boot my machine into Windows, even though my current install of Windows 10 Pro is on my 500GB NVME SSD. It works fine in general once I am able to boot into Windows and is super fast, but it can't boot to that SSD directly for some reason.
The 2TB HDD that is failing is from my old setup and still has an installation of Windows 7 on it. So when it is working normally I get given the option of booting into either Windows 7 or 10. Once Windows 10 is selected, booting works fine and is super fast, but without the HDD plugged in, it won't give me any options to boot to the SSD. When I try to use my recovery SSD, the startup repair is unable to do anything and I have tried one round of bootrec fixes to no avail. It seems like the boot record of some kind is actually housed on the mechanical HDD and I really need that to change somehow, preferably without needing to use that HDD as it is painfully slow to complete any task and could die at any minute.
Please help, what can I do in this instance?