Mixing Hard drives

[Mickey Mouse]

Disk 1
C: Drive (400gig) is partitioned c: Partition Basic NTFS Healthy(system)
127.99GB
D: Partition Basic NTFS Healthy
240.31GB
The Actual drive is a Western Digital WDC WD4000KD-00NAB0 Sata I think

Right clicking the D: Drive in computer management gives me the option to
make it (Active), should I?


Disk 0
E: Drive (200gig) is partitioned E: Partition Basic ntfs Healthy
(active)186.31GB
This Drive came from my old P4 system also Western Digital WDC
WD2000JB-00GVA0
and is connected via a seperate cable and mobo socket.
Is it ok to have these two drives on this system or should E: Drive be also,
Sata?
What is meant by active?

The reason for this post is that the system sometimes freezes on the Welcome
Screen on boot-up.


Thanks




< Processor >
Model: 1x Dual Core AMD Opteron(tm) Processor
165
Speed: 1.81GHz
Model Number: 2914 (estimated)
Performance Rating: PR5428 (estimated)
Cores per Processor: 2 Unit(s)
Threads per Core: 1 Unit(s)
Type: Dual-Core
Internal Data Cache: 2x 64kB Synchronous, Write-Back, 2-way
set,
64 byte line size
L2 On-board Cache: 2x 1MB ECC Synchronous, Write-Back,
16-way
set, 64 byte line size

< Mainboard >
Bus(es): AGP PCI USB i2c/SMBus
MP Support: 2 Processor(s)
MP APIC: No
System BIOS: Award Software International, Inc. F7
Mainboard: Gigabyte Technology Co., Ltd. nForce
Total Memory: 2GB DDR-SDRAM

< Chipset 1 >
Model: Nvidia Corp nforce3 CPU to PCI Bridge
Front Side Bus Speed: 2x 804MHz (1608MHz data rate)

< Chipset 2 >
Model: Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) Athlon 64 /
Opteron HyperTransport Technology
Configuration
Front Side Bus Speed: 2x 804MHz (1608MHz data rate)
Total Memory: 2GB DDR-SDRAM
Memory Bus Speed: 2x 201MHz (402MHz data rate)

 

[philo]

Disk 1
C: Drive (400gig) is partitioned c: Partition Basic NTFS Healthy(system)
127.99GB
D: Partition Basic NTFS Healthy 240.31GB
The Actual drive is a Western Digital WDC WD4000KD-00NAB0 Sata I think

Right clicking the D: Drive in computer management gives me the option to
make it (Active), should I?


Disk 0
E: Drive (200gig) is partitioned E: Partition Basic ntfs Healthy
(active)186.31GB
This Drive came from my old P4 system also Western Digital WDC
WD2000JB-00GVA0
and is connected via a seperate cable and mobo socket.
Is it ok to have these two drives on this system or should E: Drive be
also, Sata?
What is meant by active?

The reason for this post is that the system sometimes freezes on the
Welcome Screen on boot-up.

Yes, it's OK to have several drives of different types...
your active drive is the one the system boots from

 

[Mike Walsh]

Disk 1
C: Drive (400gig) is partitioned c: Partition Basic NTFS Healthy(system)
127.99GB
D: Partition Basic NTFS Healthy
240.31GB
The Actual drive is a Western Digital WDC WD4000KD-00NAB0 Sata I think

Right clicking the D: Drive in computer management gives me the option to
make it (Active), should I?

Only if you want to boot from it.

Disk 0
E: Drive (200gig) is partitioned E: Partition Basic ntfs Healthy
(active)186.31GB
This Drive came from my old P4 system also Western Digital WDC
WD2000JB-00GVA0
and is connected via a seperate cable and mobo socket.
Is it ok to have these two drives on this system or should E: Drive be also,
Sata?

You can mix PATA, SATA and SCSI on the same system and (depending on the BIOS) boot from whichever drive you want.

What is meant by active?

If a partition is active you can boot from it. You can have one active partition on each physical drive. The system will boot from the active partiton on the drive selected as the boot drive.

 

[Timothy Daniels]

What is meant by active?

The Primary partition marked "active" is the one
whose Boot Sector gets control from the hard drive's
Master Boot Record at boot-up. The boot sector
starts up "ntldr", the boot manager. This loader,
plus boot.ini and ntdetect.com comprise the "boot
files" that control the boot-loading of Windows.
But this "active" partition needn't be the partition
that contains the Windows operating system.
*That* partition can be anywhere in the system -
on a Primary partition or in an Extended partition,
and on any hard drive.

Microsoft calls the booting partition (the one with
the boot files) the "system" partition. It calls the
partition containing the operating system the "boot"
partition. Yes, it's inuitively backwards, but that's
Microsoft.

The thing to remember is that the "active"
partition containing the boot files, and the partition
containing the operating system can be DIFFERENT
PARTITIONS, although they are frequently the same
partition. The thing that points to the location of
the operating system is the entry in the boot.ini
file - chosen by default at boot time or by the user
from the menu presented at boot time for multi-
booted systems.

*TimDaniels*

 

[Mickey Mouse]

The Primary partition marked "active" is the one
whose Boot Sector gets control from the hard drive's
Master Boot Record at boot-up. The boot sector
starts up "ntldr", the boot manager. This loader,
plus boot.ini and ntdetect.com comprise the "boot
files" that control the boot-loading of Windows.
But this "active" partition needn't be the partition
that contains the Windows operating system.
*That* partition can be anywhere in the system -
on a Primary partition or in an Extended partition,
and on any hard drive.
Microsoft calls the booting partition (the one with
the boot files) the "system" partition. It calls the
partition containing the operating system the "boot"
partition. Yes, it's inuitively backwards, but that's
Microsoft.

The thing to remember is that the "active"
partition containing the boot files, and the partition
containing the operating system can be DIFFERENT
PARTITIONS, although they are frequently the same
partition. The thing that points to the location of
the operating system is the entry in the boot.ini
file - chosen by default at boot time or by the user
from the menu presented at boot time for multi-
booted systems.

*TimDaniels*

Ok, Let me explain this again.

C: drive is a SATA WD 400 GB and is partitioned C: 127.99GB and D: partioned
to 244.62GB
Computer management indicates that C: is Healthy and D: is Healthy

I've installed my old IDE HD (WD200gb) from my old machine with seperate
ribbon and it is now E: drive
Computer management indicates the E: is also Healthy AND ACTIVE.

How did E: get to be active instead of C:? If I format E: will my system
boot?
Can I switch the active from E: to C:

What is the best way to get things back to the way it should be? I'm
prepared to reformat everything
if I have to.

Mickey