Does anyone know the procedure for moving the boot sector from one physical
drive to another? I wish to boot from another physical hard disk.

I'm running win 2000 pro with SP4..

thks

"Jack Snow" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:Yp0Vc.28132$(E-Mail Removed)...
> Does anyone know the procedure for moving the boot sector from one
physical
> drive to another? I wish to boot from another physical hard disk.
>
> I'm running win 2000 pro with SP4..
>
> thks
>
>

All versions of DOS and Windows can boot from the first
visible, active and primary partition of the primary master
disk only. If you wish to boot from any other partition then
you have two choices:

a) Make its disk the primary master disk, or
b) Use a third-party boot loader such as XOSL

If you explain your requirement in some more detail then
someone can give you a precise answer.

Read Help about recovery console commands 'fixmbr', 'fixboot', and 'map'.
Boot order is established in the BIOS. Intel-based computer can boot from
any active primary partition. Windows can boot from any partition but
primary partition is recommended anyway.

When a disk is formatted, it normally has the boot record put onto it (even if
it is not the first disk). What is normally not done is marking the partition
as active, unless it is the first disk (and usually the first partition on
that disk, since only one partition on a disk can/should be marked as active).

In DOS, the FDISK program had a /MBR switch which would write a new boot
record to a disk. In fdisk, you could select a partition to mark as active
(but only on the first disk).

If you can boot to DOS or Win98/ME, there is a free program you can download
called AEFDISK that will allow you to write boot records, mark partitions, and
all of that.

Norton Ghost comes with GDISK (DOS) and GDISK32 (Win) that also can do these
things - the Win version has limitations, since it cannot change some things
while running under Windows.

If your boot record is special in some way and really needs to be copied from
one disk to another (not just created fresh on the second disk), you will need
some other tool. There are some hex editors that can do this kind of thing,
and something like rawrite may be able to (but I think that it is just for
floppies).

Are you going to remove your current boot disk? If not, your BIOS may not
support booting from anything but the first disk. What you may be able to do
in this case is just edit boot.ini on your current boot disk to add a choice
to load a different OS from the other disk.

In article <Yp0Vc.28132$(E-Mail Removed)>, "Jack Snow"
<(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:
|Does anyone know the procedure for moving the boot sector from one physical
|drive to another? I wish to boot from another physical hard disk.
|
|I'm running win 2000 pro with SP4..
|
|thks
|
|

"Jetro" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:(E-Mail Removed)...
> Read Help about recovery console commands 'fixmbr', 'fixboot', and 'map'.
> Boot order is established in the BIOS. Intel-based computer can boot from
> any active primary partition. Windows can boot from any partition but
> primary partition is recommended anyway.

While using the native Windows boot process, the boot files
(ntldr, ntdetect.com & boot.ini) must reside on the first visible
partition of the primary master disk. They cannot reside on
any partition, as you suggest.

Did I suggest anything regarding these files? <shrug>

No, you did not. You were delightfully vague by writing
"Windows can boot from any partition ", whatever this
may mean.


"Jetro" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:u2%(E-Mail Removed)...
> Did I suggest anything regarding these files? <shrug>
>
>

It means what was said.

Try this: from MS KB Q102873

Add another line in boot.ini which duplicates the first
line, then change the entry in the line you just created
to:

multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1) if you have a SECOND
PHYSICAL hard drive, or

multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(n) (n = 2 or 3 if using
another partition on the same hard drive from which to
boot.

Works for me....

Jäck

>-----Original Message-----
>Does anyone know the procedure for moving the boot sector
from one physical
>drive to another? I wish to boot from another physical
hard disk.
>
>I'm running win 2000 pro with SP4..
>
>thks
>
>
>.
>