Disk drive problem / XP PRO

[portchey]

Hello,

My PC has two 120Gb drives and is running Windows XP Pro.

I have a problem with one of the drives which is not a boot drive but
a datadrive.
The drive is not partitioned.

This drive, on bootup, is frequently invoking checkdisk and in all
cases does not show in "My Computer". in a lot of cases the PC will
hang on a blackscreen after the windows logo screen which results in
many reboot attempts.
The drive is obviously faulty and I wish to remove it from the PC.
I do not know which of the two drives, physically, to remove.
Both drives are sata drives connected to the motherboard with
individual sata cables.

Is there an easy way of determining which is my bootable drive and
which is my faulty data drive ?
Could I just disconnect one sata cable while the PC is running and see
if windows stops functioning ?

Thank you for any help.

Phil.

 

[Jerry]

My guess is the boot drive is on SATA 1 and the 'bad' drive on SATA 2. Just
open the case and disconnect the drive from SATA 2 and then start the
system.

 

[Bob Lucas]

What Jerry said.

But for the avoidance of doubt, you must NEVER disconnect
components, whilst the computer is running.

Power down. Then, disconnect the drive on SATA 2 and reboot.

If the computer fails to reboot, power down again. Re-connect
SATA 2 and disconnect SATA 1.

 

[portchey]

Thanks Bob & Jerry.

I will try as you suggest.
Thanks.
Phil.