external drive keeps on getting recognized as a boot-up drive

[high_revs]

so i have a 2.5" sata drive in a 2.5" external enclosure. i used this as a main drive before (like removing the old one, swap the drive, and install the os and whatever on this one to ensure if things go wrong, i have the old one to still work with).

each boot up, windows 7 hangs (enterprise) because it keeps on recognizing it as a bootable drive. i have 3 other external drives attached at the some time. all are usb. those ones don't give any headaches.

what i've done:
* delete partition and format w/in acronis. recreate partition in windows admin tools
* delete partition and format w/in windows admin tools.
* format w/in windows explorer (aka, the file manager via right click).

nothing seems to work, and would have to unplug it from usb each and every time i have to reboot. i figure the deletion of partition via acronis and windows admin tools is the same as the ol' fdisk?

thoughts what else to try and prevent from just unplugging. again, 2 other 2.5" external drives and 1 3.5" drive that don't give a hiccup on bootup


[edit] i guess i can disable the usb boot in the sequence in bios. sometimes i'd like to boot via flash drive. but it's just really strange this particular drive will be recognized as a boot drive when there are no boot files in it as opposed to the other external drives available during boot but don't get recognized. was just trying to figure out why this one drive is special but guess i have to disable usb boot in bios for now.

[chaunbot]

Change the boot order, make it boot to sata before USB. The bios prolly has a "boot USB first" option.

[Us3rName]

Change your boot priority in Bios.

When you start up your computer, it should say "Hit DEL to enter bios" It could also be F1, F2, F8, F10, F12. Sometimes even TAB.

Once inside BIOS, find the Boot priority tab and change boot order.

CDROM
HD (SATA/IDE)
USB
Network

[high_revs]

i did all of that. so here's the weird part. if i unplug this single drive and leave all the rest, the computer boots up just fine. all the others are just data drives also connected via usb (i use all 4 ports on laptop). the only difference is that the on in this particular enclosure, used to be the laptops drive. but i already wiped it clean so there's no boot file in it at all.

if i unplug it, the issue doesn't happen even with all other usb external drives connected. it seems only this one particular enclosure gives havoc even if it's been formatted and partition deleted/recreated at least 5 times.

i'm wondering if i need to do a low-level format just to make sure there are no boot files in there at all. would be surprised if there are since i did delete the partitions multiple times already.

[Flyin Brian]

I've been out of the game way too long but I believe you can go into a Windows provided application like "disk manager" and check to see if there is a way to change that drive or partition to "inactive". I know there is a way to make it active, just not how to un-do it.

To get into it, go to the windows start button and type this into the command line= diskmgmt.msc

[Nose Nuggets]

start -> right click computer and do manage
go to Disk Management
find the external in question and delete all of the partitions
you should have one unallocated volume
create a new simple volume, use the full disk, use the NTFS file system, default alocation and do a quick format

[JDay]

Try removing the boot flag from the drive.