Pavilian note identifies hard disk as secondary. Won't boot

[wvu80]

Pavillion DV7 from 2011 will not boot.  The Notebook identifies the SATA HDD as the SECONDARY DRIVE.  It does this for the OEM Toshiba 600GB HDD and the 128GB Toshiba SSD  the latter recently purchased.  I own an external USB hub.  Both drives work fine in this drive.

The DV7 does not allow me to set the primary drive.  All factory defaults have been restored.  I assume the problem is the DV7 identifying the HDD as Secondary and therefore won't boot.  Error code is F30.   I am experienced with computers, please feel free to talk technical.

Suggestions?

[WAWood · Accepted solution]

@wvu80 

How are the HDD and SSD connected to the laptop -- through a single cable?  IF so, the order of the connection of the devices on the cable will determine the order of the drives seen in the BIOS.  To swap primary and secondary drive, you swap the cable connections.  That should do the trick.

If they are connected using a single cable each, once again, swap the cable connections and that should do it.

[wvu80]

You nailed it.  I just didn't want to believe what the messages were telling me that it was trying to boot through the secondary drive.  The messages were right all along.

This was my son's computer and somebody had taken the HDD out and re-installed by plugging the data cable into Disk2 instead of Disk1.  Once I plugged the cable into the proper connector it booted immediately.

Thanks for your help and a 100% successful solution.