hard drive boot order

[Miles Promo]

BIOS gurus: My Dell Dimension manual says that the BIOS looks down
its boot order list of hard drives until it finds one with an operating system.
Then it passes control to the ntldr there that loads the operating system.
So I put my usual system hard drive 2nd in the list, and I put a partitioned
(but unformatted) new hard drive at the head of the list. The boot time error
code says "No operating system found." OK, so I formatted the new hard
drive so as to give it a boot sector and tried again. Same error code.
OK, so I set the new partition active with Disk Management and tried again.
Now it says "No ntldr found".

The question is: Why didn't the BIOS just move on to the 2nd hard drive
where it would have found the operating system?


Miles2Go

 

[Folkert Rienstra]

BIOS gurus: My Dell Dimension manual says that the BIOS looks down
its boot order list of hard drives until it finds one with an operating system.

Until it finds one 'capable of having an operating system'.
So if you have it partitioned with a primary partition, it qualifies.

Then it passes control to the ntldr there that loads the operating system.
So I put my usual system hard drive 2nd in the list, and I put a partitioned
(but unformatted) new hard drive at the head of the list. The boot time error
code says "No operating system found."

And it was probably correct.

OK, so I formatted the new hard drive so as to give it a boot sector and tried again.
Same error code.

Of course.

OK, so I set the new partition active with Disk Management and tried again.
Now it says "No ntldr found".

And again it was right, obviously as you didn't put the OS (which includes ntldr)
on it too.

The question is: Why didn't the BIOS just move on to the 2nd hard drive
where it would have found the operating system?

Because it found a primary partition on the drive it was supposed to boot from. So it tried and it couldn't

 

[gg]

BIOS gurus: My Dell Dimension manual says that the BIOS looks down

its boot order list of hard drives until it finds one with an operating system.
Then it passes control to the ntldr there that loads the operating system.
So I put my usual system hard drive 2nd in the list, and I put a partitioned
(but unformatted) new hard drive at the head of the list. The boot time error
code says "No operating system found." OK, so I formatted the new hard
drive so as to give it a boot sector and tried again. Same error code.
OK, so I set the new partition active with Disk Management and tried again.
Now it says "No ntldr found".

The question is: Why didn't the BIOS just move on to the 2nd hard drive
where it would have found the operating system?

I am far from a Guru, but it is likely that the Bios only searches
until it finds a disk structure like a MBR (master boot record) or
such. There might be other shortcomings or problems with the Bios as
well. Perhaps a new version would improve the situation.

If you want to test this I have included a link to a Gateway compuetr
HDD testing & zeroing utility Gwscan. It works with any brand of HDD.
Not sure about scsi or serial ATa HDDs.
http://support.gateway.com/support/drivers/getFile.asp?id=19707&uid=69753249

I have found it much, much faster than similar programs from HDD
manufacturers. Of course you would only need to do the "quick" zeroing
which only writes zeros to the very start of the drive. Although it is
so fast that it would only take an hour to zero the whole drive.

Whenever I use a tool like this I ALWAYS unplug the other HDDs. Its
too easy too say oops!

 

[Miles Promo]

Until it finds one 'capable of having an operating system'.
So if you have it partitioned with a primary partition, it qualifies.


And it was probably correct.


Of course.


And again it was right, obviously as you didn't put the OS (which includes ntldr)
on it too.


Because it found a primary partition on the drive it was supposed to boot from.
So it tried and it couldn't

How could a hard drive NOT have a primary partition (and still be useable for
something)? Aren't extended partitions just appendages to primary partitions?
That is, can just extended partitions exist on a hard drive without there being
any primary partitions?


Miles2Go

 

[Tom Scales]

How could a hard drive NOT have a primary partition (and still be useable
for
something)? Aren't extended partitions just appendages to primary
partitions?
That is, can just extended partitions exist on a hard drive without there
being
any primary partitions?


Miles2Go

A hard drive can happily have only an extended partition.

 

[Folkert Rienstra]

How could a hard drive NOT have a primary partition (and still be useable for
something)? Aren't extended partitions just appendages to primary partitions?
That is, can just extended partitions exist on a hard drive without there being
any primary partitions?
Plonk!



Miles2Go

 

[Brian K]

How could a hard drive NOT have a primary partition (and still be useable
for
something)? Aren't extended partitions just appendages to primary
partitions?
That is, can just extended partitions exist on a hard drive without there
being
any primary partitions?


Miles2Go

An Extended Partition is a primary partition and counts as one of the four
allowed on a hard drive.

Brian

 

[Miles Promo]

An Extended Partition is a primary partition and counts as one of the four
allowed on a hard drive.

OK. I also found these words intoned by the automated MS guru:
"A hard disk can contain four primary partitions, one of which can be
an extended partition that can contain an unlimited number of logical drives."

I guess my concept of "extended partition" was corrupted.


Miles2Go