Bootcamp -w- duel drives

Hello Everyone,

I've ran into a small problem when installing bootcamp on my 13" 2013 MBP. I currently have a 120gb SSD installed, and removed the Super Drive and have a 500GB HDD in it's place. The end goal is to have the 500GB HDD split into two partitions evenly, Windows being on half of it.

I first had issues installing windows after setting this up in the Bootcamp Assistant, the Windows installer kept throwing errors, and after researching that a little bit, I found someone on the apple support forums(maybe? can't find the thread again) saying that after they removed all of the drives that were not the target, they no longer got that error, so I took out the SSD and Windows installed and is working fine.

The issue is, once I put the SSD back in, I can no longer boot into windows, it just boots to a black screen with the "_" flashing. If I remove the SSD it works fine.

The bootcamp assistant is installed on the windows side, and it seems to be working fine (still new to bootcamp so can't say this for sure), the only issue is I am unable to boot once the SSD is in.

It's a 2.5 GHz Core i5, currently with 4GB of RAM (planning on upgrading to 16 at some point), and the Intel 4000 Graphics. OS X Mavericks installed on Mac side, fully updated, and the target Windows is Home Premium 64-bit (have a key for this version that isn't currently being use).

Any and all advice welcomed and appreciated, thanks so much
~Zak

Your troubles stem from the fact that you can not boot Windows from a secondary drive. If you were on a PC, all you would need to do is switch the BIOS to make the secondary the primary. You can not do that on your Mac. You need to setup the dual boot with Boot Camp on whichever drive is the SATA position. Move the SSD to the SATA position and the hard drive to the ATA position (optical drive slot).

chscag said:

Your troubles stem from the fact that you can not boot Windows from a secondary drive. If you were on a PC, all you would need to do is switch the BIOS to make the secondary the primary. You can not do that on your Mac. You need to setup the dual boot with Boot Camp on whichever drive is the SATA position. Move the SSD to the SATA position and the hard drive to the ATA position (optical drive slot).

Click to expand...

Right now, the SSD has ONLY the OS X on it, and the 500gb is the one partitioned into two drives, a 250gb Data drive for OSX(file storage and etc) and 250 drive just for windows, so there is no duel boot drive by itself.

Can OS X boot if it is in the ATA position though? If so I can just change them around, put the SSD in the optical slot and the HDD in the SATA.

Or is what I'm looking to do not possible?

Thanks for the reply
~Zak

The idea is to boot from the SSD in order to take advantage of the speed it provides. The SSD should be in the SATA position. Place your user home folder on the SSD with Windows as a dual boot. Place all your other data (music, movies, books, etc) on the hard drive.

The problem with your SSD is that it's too small for dual booting. The minimum size for dual booting in my opinion should be 256 GB or larger. I realize that SSDs are not cheap. If you can return the 120 GB SSD for a larger one, that would be much easier to work with.

If not, as I said above... just put your home folder on the SSD and devote the remainder to Windows. However you wind up doing it, keep in mind that you can not boot Windows from the ATA slot as long as you have a drive in the SATA slot. Windows will only boot if it's the primary drive. By the way, the same applies to a Windows PC, however, there you have a BIOS which can swap primary and secondary on the fly.

thanks for the info chscag -

I was able to get desired functionality by switching the SSD to the ATA position though, and the HDD back to the SATA position.

so in the harddrive bay, I have the 500GB HDD, which has the Bootcamp Windows partition on it, and the other partition as a data drive for Mac OS X.
And in the ATA Superdrive Bay, I have the SSD with the Mac OS X on it by itself.

Good to know that Windows needs to be in the SATA position, but OS X does not need to be.

Cheers, thanks for the help
~Zak

OK, glad you got it working the way you wanted. It is better though for future reference that you consider placing the SSD in the SATA position for faster performance. Of course that means a much larger SSD is needed. ($$$) Have fun.