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Okay, this is strange. I've been running Windows 8 for a while now and it looks like it did something strange when I installed. I currently have 3 HDs installed on the system. My C: drive (HD1) is where I have Windows 8 installed. What it looks like Win8 did was boot the boot files (the Bootmgr, Boot directory, bootnxt) on another data drive (HD2). I want to reformat HD2 but since those files are there I can't do anything with HD2.

Is there anyway that I can make HD1 be the real boot drive (where it holds the Bootfiles as well as the Windows files)? I tried deleting the files off the F: drive (HD2) but then Windows wouldn't boot so I had to repair the files. That caused it to recreate the boot files on F: instead of C:.

You will probably need to dabble with BCDEdit to clone the boot files and boot info into your C:.

That worked but it was a bit strange. I had to remove my other drives from the BIOS in order to get everything right. Then I ran the following commands (just in case someone else runs into this.)

I had to boot off the Windows 8 install DVD and then go into the advanced options so that I could enter the Command Prompt and then do the following.

bootrec.exe /fixmbr
bootsec.exe /nt60 all /force
attrib -h -s c:\boot\bcd
del c:\boot\bcd
bootrec.exe /rebuildbcd
bootrec.exe /fixboot

once I did all of that and rebooted everything worked great. I'm not how Windows ever ended up using a data drive for boot configuration data but now it's pointed to my actual boot drive (c:).

Thanks for the suggestion.

I typically disconnect all drives other than the drive I am installing to, or else you can weird behaviour like this.