boot problems with secondary hard drive removal

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Guest

I am experiencing boot problems after removing one of two hard drives. I
think I understand why it is happening, but I do not know how to correct it.
Here is my setup:
[disk 0 Basic 74.52 GB] 80 GB (E:) 74.52 GB NTFS Healthy (Boot) [Logical]
[disk 1 Basic 186.31 GB] (C:) 19.53 GB NTFS Healthy (System) [Primary] (D:)
166.77 GB NTFS Healthy [Logical]
I boot to the operating system on the (E:) drive and use it as my main
drive. I use disk 1 as my backup and video editing drive. I want to remove
disk 1, format it, and use it as a storage drive on a new computer. I want to
leave disk 0 (E:) in my old computer and continue to boot from it. How do I
do this given that the "BOOT INI" file is on the drive I wish to remove?
 
semiarid said:
I am experiencing boot problems after removing one of two hard drives. I
think I understand why it is happening, but I do not know how to correct it.
Here is my setup:
[disk 0 Basic 74.52 GB] 80 GB (E:) 74.52 GB NTFS Healthy (Boot) [Logical]
[disk 1 Basic 186.31 GB] (C:) 19.53 GB NTFS Healthy (System) [Primary] (D:)
166.77 GB NTFS Healthy [Logical]
I boot to the operating system on the (E:) drive and use it as my main
drive. I use disk 1 as my backup and video editing drive. I want to remove
disk 1, format it, and use it as a storage drive on a new computer. I want to
leave disk 0 (E:) in my old computer and continue to boot from it. How do I
do this given that the "BOOT INI" file is on the drive I wish to remove?
Click to expand...

Since your WinXP installation resides on a logical drive, you
cannot boot into it. The simplest and safest solution would be
to buy an old hard disk, e.g. 1 GByte in size, and split it into
two primary partitions. This would resolve the following problems:
- It would give you a bootable primary partition.
- It would retain your drive letters C:, D: and E:
To make this work, just format the new partitions, then
copy the hidden files c:\ntldr, c:\ntdetect.com and c:\boot.ini
to the new drive C:.

The alternative is much more complex. It would involve
converting the logical drive into a primary partition and
manipulating the registry to make it assign drive letter E:
to the first partition on the disk. There is a good chance
that you might lose your installation altogether.
 
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