Windows no longer boots with second hard drive connected

I have been running my laptop (Thinkpad W530) with two hard drives for about a year (Main SSD and secondary HD) with no problems until all the sudden this morning when I turned my laptop on, it wouldn't boot windows, instead it went to a black screen that said main HDD error and to press enter to repair.

After trying the auto repair, it didn't find anything, and still wouldn't boot windows, so I popped out my secondary hard drive caddy and started my laptop. Everything started fine, and I popped the second HD back in before logging into windows and there were no issues. But now everytime I start Windows with my second HD attached, it goes into the automatic repair mode and won't boot windows, so I have to pop the hard drive out, start the computer and pop it back in.

I have no idea why this started happening all of the sudden. I haven't upgraded from Windows 8 to 8.1 because it won't allow me (due to relocating the users folder), but I did run the windows and lenovo updates the other day. Could something there have caused the issue?

I just ran the latest BIOS update and upon start up afterwards it still went into the automatic repair.

If anyone is experiencing this same problem, or has any insight, that would be very helpful!

Thanks!

The link below might help:
https://forums.lenovo.com/t5/W-Seri...al-drive-connected-No-solution-or/td-p/890949

Did you do some updates? It looks like that Windows update may have screwed up your storagecontroller drivers in some way. If you have your motherboard support CD, try to reinstall the chipset drivers, which should include your storage controller drivers. If not, download the latest chipset drivers from the motherboard manufacturer's website.

Failing that, check in BIOS and verify that your other hard drive is being detected, if it is not, try resetting the CMOS, by unplugging your computer and removing the CMOS battery for several minutes. If your second hard drive is still not detected after that in BIOS, then you either have a dead hard drive, or a bad motherboard. Test the hard drive that isn't being detected in another computer to verify whether or not it is working if resetting the CMOS doesn't fix that.

Did you do some updates? It looks like that Windows update may have screwed up your storagecontroller drivers in some way. If you have your motherboard support CD, try to reinstall the chipset drivers, which should include your storage controllerdrivers. If not, download the latest chipset drivers from the motherboard manufacturer's website.

Failing that, check in BIOS and verify that your other hard drive is being detected, if it is not, try resetting the CMOS, by unplugging your computer and removing the CMOS battery for several minutes. If your second hard drive is still not detected after that in BIOS, then you either have a dead hard drive, or a bad motherboard. Test the hard drive that isn't being detected in another computer to verify whether or not it is working if resetting the CMOS doesn't fix that.

Thanks Archer, I will try updating the chipset drivers.

The hard drive works perfectly fine, the laptop is running now, same as always. The issue is for some reason when I start the laptop now it won't start if the hard drive is attached, so I have to pull it out and put it in once windows is booted.

Hard drive is detected in the BIOS and on my computer and everything, so hopefully your suggestion will fix the problem.

Well I tried updating my chipset drivers, didn't help.

Put a different hard drive in my laptop and it started fine.

Put the hard drive that is causing problems in my old thinkpad running windows 7 and it started up fine and recgonized the hard drive in the disk management tool, but it had a yellow triangle with an exclamation mark in it and it said foreign under the drive info. Is this just because the drive hadn't been formatted on that computer?

The thing that puzzles me, is other than the fact that my computer won't start when the hard drive is plugged in, once I start it without the hard drive connected, and then connect it before logging in, everything works completely fine. So the hard drive definitely isn't dead, there is just the issue upon start up.

Anybody else have any other ideas how I could go about fixing this?

Is the 2nd hard drive bootable? I get this problem when I have a bootable USB hard drive connected to the USB port at startup time. There's a very long delay during startup, but it does eventually get there. Unplug the USB drive and everything reboots really fast. Doesn't happen with non-bootable USB drives.