b11_ said:
If I decide to boot drive 3 instead of drive 1, should I change the boot
order as below:
3rd boot device - from 1ST IDE HDD to 3RD IDE HDD
Then go to the BIOS Power Control Setup and change as below:
Primary Master Ide - Change MONITOR to IGNORE
Primary Slave Ide - IGNORE (no change)
Secondary Master Ide - Change IGNORE to MONITOR
Secondary Slave Ide - IGNORE (no change)
All that you have to adjust is the Hard Drive Boot Order in
the BIOS. (This is NOT the Device Boot Order.)
The DEFAULT hard drive boot order is as you listed it, i.e.
Primary Master,
Primary Slave,
Secondary Master,
Secondary Slave.
Most BIOSes allow you to alter this boot order, but assuming
that you have not, the values of "rdisk()" in the boot.ini file also
have the same order as that default hard drive boot order. That is,
"rdisk(0)" means the Primary Master, etc. If one slot doesn't
contain a HD, that slot is just skipped in the numbering, and if
you change the hard drive boot order, "rdisk(0)" will just refer
to the HD that is at the head of the new order. This means that by
adding entries to the boot.ini file under the line "[operating systems]"
so that there is one for each value of "rdisk()", i.e "rdisk(0)" thru
"rdisk(2)" (since you have 3 HDs), you can select which of your
HDs takes control at startup with no need to muck around with
the cables. In your scenario, to boot the 3rd HD instead of the
1st, choose the entry in the boot menu with "rdisk(2)" instead of
"rdisk(0)". You can make this explicit in the menu by either
putting the value of "rdisk()" in the character line between the
quotes in the boot.ini entries or by actually naming the hard drive
in the character line. Just give a value such a "10" in boot.ini's
timeout value to give yourself enough time to decide on which
entry to choose at boot time.
*TimDaniels*
