Trying to remove a secondary hard drive from desktop - crashing

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jonas opines

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May 14, 2022
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Hello, I am new to this forum so I hope this is the correct place to ask. I've recently moved to a new desktop computer from one that I've had for about 10 years. The old one has become the family center plugged into the TV, for printing and a few other common apps. It is a desktop I put together myself, an Intel I5 on an ASUS motherboard, Nvidea 1080 graphics card, running Windows 10.

I had migrated all of my personal files over to my second internal hard drive, with the plan to remove that drive and use it as an external on my new computer. I had no trouble using the HD on my new computer, but removing it from the old one caused it to repeatedly blue screen, giving me an error that unfortunately I did not write down. I don't remember the exact error ID# or terminology, but It was a missing drive error, and said it was caused if a drive is malfunctioning or lost connection.

I assume that I am missing a preference setting or backup setting somewhere that is pointing at that drive. I did try to sanitize that before I did this, of course, and I'm not so sure where to look. It was my storage drive on the old computer, and the videos, pictures, etc. shortcuts were all to it, but I re-mapped those.

Is there a way to do this cleanly, or maybe a way to search common settings to remove the references to the old HD? I can migrate the files via another external drive, but I'd really like to utilize all that storage space where it's needed.

Thanks for any help you can provide.
 
as you have said, it sounds like there is something on that 'second' drive that the 'first' drive is looking for.
that could be anything from a relocated pagefile, temp files, software folder or remapped personal files like Documents, Pictures, Videos, Desktop, Music.
if the PC had both drives installed when first setup, Windows may have even put on some boot information onto it.

I'd be putting both drives back into the PC and going through all the things you can think of to get any reference to that second drive relocated onto the first drive.

if the reason that PC needed two drives was because the first drive is too small, would it simply be less hassle to leave both drives as they were and get a new one for you other PC?
 
Sigh, I'd hoped there was a command I could run that I didn't know about . . . .

Guess I'll just spend some more time digging. It might be the backup settings. The drive had been for media storage, tons of high rez jpg pics from some artists I support and large mp4s, and game mod archives, plus the backup and disc image. l'd hoped to save the time transferring to the new computer, and using my old external that had my family files on it anyway on the old computer.

Thanks for the help with confirming. Appreciated.
 
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