Removing primary hard drive from a dual-boot system

  • Thread starter Thread starter AndrewDucker
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A

AndrewDucker

I have two hard drives. XP is on both. I boot from drive 1, and then
choose which drive to load the OS from.

Drive 1 is dying - and so I need to remove it. But drive 2 doesn't
boot.

How can I make XP boot from the second drive?

Cheers!

Andy
 
AndrewDucker said:
I have two hard drives. XP is on both. I boot from drive 1, and then
choose which drive to load the OS from.

Drive 1 is dying - and so I need to remove it. But drive 2 doesn't
boot.

How can I make XP boot from the second drive?

Cheers!

Andy
Click to expand...


First off. I'm going to assume drive 1 is your C: drive
and drive 2 is your D: drive.


If the 2nd drive *retains* the drive letter D:
you can bootup with your XP cd and from the repair console
issue the command fixboot.

Note, that will only work if the second drive does not become re-assigned
the letter C:

To be on the safe side...
I'd probably replace the first drive with an NTFS drive
and then perform the above mentioned repair
 
Its because the boot record is on Disk 1
Now if you remove Disk1, Disk 2 will become C (Disk1) so your installation
is likely to be riddled with pointers to the incorrect drive.
Your call
 
No, DL, that won't happen. Drive letter assignments on NT operating
systems are persistent, if the op moves the drive and boots the NT
operating system it will keep the drive letter it was assigned when it
was installed.

John
 
OK

John John said:
No, DL, that won't happen. Drive letter assignments on NT operating
systems are persistent, if the op moves the drive and boots the NT
operating system it will keep the drive letter it was assigned when it was
installed.

John
Click to expand...
 
AndrewDucker said:
I have two hard drives. XP is on both. I boot from drive 1, and then
choose which drive to load the OS from.

Drive 1 is dying - and so I need to remove it. But drive 2 doesn't
boot.

How can I make XP boot from the second drive?

Cheers!
Click to expand...

Several things need to happen in order to remove drive 1 and
successfully boot on drive 2.

1- Drive 2 must contain a primary active partition, it probably does,
use the disk management tool and check to see that it does have a
primary partition and check that the partition is marked as active.

2- The active partition must have an NT boot sector, it does if it was
formated with the XP setup disk or if it was formated from within
Windows XP. Formating a drive with XP utilities writes an NT boot
sector to the partition.

3- The files ntldr, NTDETECT.COM and boot.ini must be in located in the
root of the of the active partition, the partition containing these
files is referred to as the System Partition.

4- The boot.ini file must contain a valid ARC path to the Windows
installation.

Chances are that conditions 1 & 2 already exist.

To meet the conditions in #3 simply copy the files from the current
System Partition to the active partition on the second drive.

As for #4, here again one of the ARC paths already in the Boot.ini file
should point to the installation on drive 2 after you move the drives.
If not you can use an all purpose boot.ini file or you can boot to the
Recovery Console and use the bootcfg command to scan the disk and add
the XP installation to the file.

Be sure that you cable your drive correctly when you move it and if you
are using PATA drives make sure that the Master/Slave jumpers are
properly set.

If you need more help or further explanations please post again.

John
 
John John said:
No, DL, that won't happen. Drive letter assignments on NT operating
systems are persistent, if the op moves the drive and boots the NT
operating system it will keep the drive letter it was assigned when it
was installed.
Click to expand...



I just checked that and have confirmed that it is *correct*.

The advice I gave was not right...and the reason for my error was that if a
bootsector repair
for the OS on drive D: is initiated...the repair console will identify the
drive as the C: drive.

However once the bootsector is repaired by initiating the fixboot command.
when the system reboots, the drive will still carry the D: drive letter
assignment.


Thanks there John John!!!!
 
John John said:
As for #4, here again one of the ARC paths already in the Boot.ini
file should point to the installation on drive 2 after you move the drives. If
not you can use an all purpose boot.ini file or you can boot to the Recovery
Console and use the bootcfg command to scan the disk
and add the XP installation to the file.

Be sure that you cable your drive correctly when you move it and if
you are using PATA drives make sure that the Master/Slave jumpers
are properly set.
Click to expand...


By removal of drive 1, drive 2 will automatically become the boot
drive, i.e. "drive 1", and the 1st ARC path entry under
"[operating systems]" in the existing boot.ini file (and the default ARC
path entry after "default=") will point to the OS in what is currently drive 2.
To avoid the boot menu appearing on the screen, just remove the 2nd
ARC path entry which includes the argument "rdisk(1)". You can also
set the "timeout" value to 0, but that will be implied by there being only one
ARC path entry after "[operating systems]". This means that you have
the option of either leaving the current drive 2 where it is or moving it to
the cable position of the current drive 1. But if the removal of current
drive 1 would leave the end position of a PATA IDE cable unoccupied,
either put some other IDE device there, or put current drive 2 there
because PATA IDE controllers don't like the signal reflections coming
back from an unoccupied end connector (an unoccupied center connector
is OK).

BTW, the device at the end connector doesn't have to be jumpered
as Master. If you're using jumpers to set the Master/Slave mode, the
device at the center conector can be Master and the device at the end
connector can be Slave. All that's important is that they're different.
In some (or most) BIOSes, the "Master" HD will have default boot
priority over a "Slave" on the same channel and be designated as "rdisk(0)"
in the boot.ini file, but that priority can be reset manually in the BIOS.

*TimDaniels*
 
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