Dual Hard Drive Designation & Access.

  • Thread starter Thread starter Richard55
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R

Richard55

Hi...
To my Dell Dimension 8200 WinXP-Home I've just added a second hard
drive, so now it has two similar Western Digital 80 GB drives
(different content).
I'm using the boot manager OSL2000 that lets me boot to either drive.

Using cable-select connections , one drive is "primary" and the other
"secondary," each formatted in one big NTSC partition and both
separately bootable with Win XP-HOME as the OS.

As expected when booted to the primary C: Drive, Control Panel's
Computer Management / Disk Management correctly shows that primary
drive (volume) is designated C: Drive (cable position zero) , and the
secondary drive appears as F: Drive (cable position one).

(Drives D: and E: are CD/DVD drives).

This same correct C: & F: Drive set-up also appears under MY COMPUTER


BUT, then when booted to the other drive, the secondary drive appears
in MY COMPUTER as the only hard drive listed , and is erroneously
designated as C: Drive, not F: Drive as it's supposed to be.

Also when booted into the Secondary Drive, although the F: Drive DISK
MANAGER does show the presence of two hard drives, it designates
itself as the C: Drive and gives no letter designator at all to the
primary (zero) drive. It won't let me change any drive letters or
access the (primary) drive.

Can you (1) help me get these letters straightened out so that both
drives are telling the same story in either boot, and

(2) also suggest how I can access the other drive's files while booted
to the secondary drive, as is possible when booted to the primary?

Thanks very much,
Richard
 
Richard,

How did you install the OS on your secondary drive? If you did an image
copy from the primary drive I think that you would get the symptom you
described. Similarly, if you installed the OS by connectiong what is
currently the secondary drive as the primary and installed the OS to it, I
think you would get these symptoms. Did you install the OS to the
secondary drive while it was the secondary drive?

traderv
 
Traderv...
Good Question-- as a paranoid precaution I HAD removed the (old)
drive before formatting & installing the o.s. in what is now the
secondary drive. So yes, the new secondary drive WAS in the primary
position when it was set up.
That's kind of discouraging, but thanks for shedding a little light
on the problem. If you're correct, do you see any easier way of
rearanging things without starting all over & formatting & installing
winxp?
Thanks again,
Richard
 
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