dual boot 2 HD's

[Guest]

I Installed a 2nd HD and cloned my first HD to it as a backup
and would like to be able to dual boot. This is XP Pro.
I cannot boot from the 2nd hard. If I disable the primary
drive by removing the power plug I am able to boot from
the 2nd HD. The computer sees everything and I can use
all the partitions. In dual if I try and use the 2nd drive I
get this message:

Windows could not start because of a hardware configeration
problem. Could not read from selected boot disk. check boot
path and disk hardware.

In the boot.ini I use this setting

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP
Professional" /fastdetect

multi(0)disk(1)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP
Professional BACKUP" /fastdetect

What should the boot.ini look like in the second HD

thank you

 

[John]

I Installed a 2nd HD and cloned my first HD to it as a backup
and would like to be able to dual boot. This is XP Pro.
I cannot boot from the 2nd hard. If I disable the primary
drive by removing the power plug I am able to boot from
the 2nd HD. The computer sees everything and I can use
all the partitions. In dual if I try and use the 2nd drive I
get this message:

Windows could not start because of a hardware configeration
problem. Could not read from selected boot disk. check boot
path and disk hardware.

In the boot.ini I use this setting

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP
Professional" /fastdetect

multi(0)disk(1)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP
Professional BACKUP" /fastdetect

What should the boot.ini look like in the second HD

thank you

Firstly, as you have found out, a cloned drive will not work in your
situation unless you physically disconnect the other drive. This is
because partition and drive numbering are incorrect on the cloned copy
when both drives are connected. Your best bet is to do an install of XP
on the 2nd drive.

If using MS's boot.ini you can only boot from the active partition. It
doesn't matter which drive that partition happens to be on as long as
the partition is a primary (in MS'S case an extended partition won't
do). To use boot.ini to boot two or more OS's on different drives or
partitions all the boot strap files for all the OS's must be in one
common *active* partition. In XP's case there are actually three boot
files, boot.ini, ntldr and ntdetect.com. In addition that partition must
be formated with a file system that all the OS's are capable of reading.
It used to be quite common to format a small C: in FAT16 and use it
strictly as a boot strap partition with all the OS's *installed not
cloned* to other partitions on the same or other drives.

The only way around this is with a 3rd party boot manager that is
capable of making a partition active, a drive disappear and (if needed)
boot from an extended partition - all on the fly. Good luck!

In any event never put two OS's on the same partition.

John