Installing Windows 7 on HD in Optical Drive Bay

[salocin]

Hi,
today I did a bit of an upgrade for my mac (Specs will follow). I upgraded my original HD with an SSD 120gb and placed the old 500gb HD into an Optical Drive adabter and connected it that way. All worked perfectly (except for the one screw I had to drill through because my tools sucked... ).

I installed Mountain Lion on the SSD and started setting it up a bit. Then I tried to boot into my Windows partition that I still had on the HD that is now n the Optical Bay. When trying to boot it nothing happened except black screen + blinking cursor. So I thought I'll just completely reformat the HD to Mac os Extended Journaled. Then Using bootcamp make a 150gb partition for Windows 7 and reinstall it again from the installation USB I had from last time.

Partitioning Works fine, restarts and installation starts. All works fine until the part where I have to select the partition to which I want to install Windows.

It says Windows cannot be installed to Disk 1 Partition 3 (Show Details)
When I click for the details:
"Windows cannot be installed to this disk. This computer's hardware may not support booting to this disk. Ensure that the disk's controller is enabled in the computer's BIOS menu."

No Idea what this means... I really want to have Windows on my second Harddrive. I want the 150gb for windows and then the rest of the HD (350gb) to store files which I don't need on my Mac OS X running SSD since that only has 120gb.

I'm kind of lost. I can't really find anything on this topic. Some stuff that might be on it but i'm not sure because its way to advanced stuff for me. I am quite advanced at using Mac os, but when it comes to windows, i'm a complete newbie.

If anyone has a solution for this or any help I would be extremely greatful.
Cheers Guys and Girls
Salocin.

 

[salocin]

noone got any idea how to do this?

 

[Dalton63841]

Boot Camp Assistant is nothing but a fancy Disk Utlity GUI for setting up dual boot.

Boot into the Windows install disk, and when it gets to the part asking about where to install(and tells you you can't), delete all the partitions on the hard drive you want to install to*. Then let the Windows installer format the drive itself. Afterward it should play nice.

*Be ABSOLUTELY certain you delete and format the right drive. It should be easy enough. Because you have used BCA, the drive will have a partition called BOOTCAMP.

 

[saturnotaku]

Boot into the Windows install disk

Not possible if you took out the SuperDrive on a MacBook Pro of recent vintage.

 

[salocin]

I will try that. I made a install usb stick so it should be possible, sicne I installed from that usb stick before and it worked perfectly. the only problem is that I want to install it on the secondary harddrive, which officially doesn't exist because thats where the cd drive is supposed to be. I'll try it later once back from work. and i'll report back...

 

[chrfr]

I will try that. I made a install usb stick so it should be possible, sicne I installed from that usb stick before and it worked perfectly. the only problem is that I want to install it on the secondary harddrive, which officially doesn't exist because thats where the cd drive is supposed to be. I'll try it later once back from work. and i'll report back...

It won't boot there. If this is a 2012 Macbook Pro, you can put the SSD in the optical bay and not lose performance, though you may have Bluetooth interference issues if you do.

 

[salocin]

Yes it is a 2012 MacBook Pro. So I can put the SSD into the optical bay drive and boot into Mac OS X from that and then Install Windows on the old HD when it is in the normal HD slot, and then boot from both? Windows HD and Mac SSD?
Thanks for the info will defenatly try that.

 

[chrfr]

Yes it is a 2012 MacBook Pro. So I can put the SSD into the optical bay drive and boot into Mac OS X from that and then Install Windows on the old HD when it is in the normal HD slot, and then boot from both? Windows HD and Mac SSD?
Thanks for the info will defenatly try that.

Yes, OS X will boot from an SSD or spinning disk in either position.

 

[Dalton63841]

Not possible if you took out the SuperDrive on a MacBook Pro of recent vintage.

Sitting here with a 2009 Macbook Pro with an SSD in the HDD bay, and a 1TB hard drive in the Superdrive bay. I was able to boot into the Windows install disk quite easily with an external DVD drive.

 

[salocin]

Ok so yesterday i switched the HD and SSD, so now the HD is in its old place and the SSD is in the adapter. OS X still boots perfectly like expected. Window installation doesn't bring up the error anymore that I used to get when the HD was in the adapter, and Installation seems to work perfectly. I get to the part of the installation where I type in username, pc name, and then password. After that the laptop reboots again (how as far as I know is normal... However when booted up again all that happens is Black screen with a blinking cursor. I had this before with my windows install (but not direclty after install). I installed it 4 times but everytime same thing. And sadly not like last time it would take like 5-6 minutes to boot and there was a fix once booted. I waited 20 minutes and nothing happened ! No idea why this is happenign now. Any idea what i have to do? I read somewhere it might be due to extra harddrives being connected, and yes on first install i had a external HD connected via usb, but on the other 3 attempts all I had was the install usb. Thanks guys for the help so far, it looks like already a big step further form the error. It seems windows is installed perfectly now, Just gott get past that blackscreen and blinking cursor.
regards,
salocin

 

[chrfr]

Take out or just disconnect the second disk during the Windows installation, and put it back afterward.

 

[salocin]

I will try that after Work. But does that mean I have to Use bootcamp assistant to partition the HD then when boot camp automatically restarts, shut the laptop down, disconnect the SSD and then reboot holding alt and go onto the Windows install usb?

 

[itsAerosol]

Yes, OS X will boot from an SSD or spinning disk in either position.

So what I'm getting from your post and almost everyone else's is to move the HD from the main bay to the optical bay, and install the new SSD in the main bay and install Windows there, right?

Can Windows not boot from the SSD in the optical bay?

 

[Moats]

I'm having that same issue even though i try the disconnecting of the drive in bay 1 it would install but after installation and i reconnect the drive in bay 1 which is my music drive it goes into boot manager with an error winload.exe.. Apparently when you reconnect the drive in bay 1 its referring back to it as disk0.... I can't put the drive in the optical bay it runs too slow its a 1TB @ 7200 rpm... So having the 1TB in bay 1 all the content loads whens I boot in OS X... Hence the reason why I keep the SSD in the Optical Bay...

Any Ideas?