Swapping drives

[Esha]

I had 1 SATA drive with Windows XP on it. I decided to add 1 more SATA drive
and move my primary partition to the new drive.
I connected the 2nd drive and after Windows loaded I created 2 partitions on
it - J and K
I ran Symantec Ghost and created an image and saved it to K partition.
I ran Ghost again and restored an image onto partition J. Then I swapped
cables on drives, so now I see in BIOS the new drive as drive 0 and the old
one as drive 1.
The system says 'No bootable device found' when I try to start Windows. I
removed physically the old drive from the system. I get a message that drive
1 cannot be found.

What should I do in order to make the new drive bootable? With or without
the old drive be presented on the system. Both drives are SATA and there are
no jumpers.
Maybe if I remove somehow the old drive from BIOS (I do not know how to do
that - I tried to switch from ON to OFF with no success, it's still there)
the system will recognize a new drive as bootable?

Any advice what to do in order to make a new drive bootable please

Esha

 

[NewScience]

Have you tried loading the XP CD, Recover console and use the fixboot
utility or fixmbr utility?

 

[Esha]

No, I didn't. It's Dell manufactured PC and I've got restore CD only, I have
no XP CD.
Thank you

 

[Mike Cawood, HND BIT]

No, I didn't. It's Dell manufactured PC and I've got restore CD only, I
have no XP CD.
Thank you

The restore CD is the WinXP CD as far as your PC is concerned.
Regards Mike

 

[Guest]

As far as I know, the Dell restore CD is pretty much the exact same thing as
the XP CD.

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

As far as I know, the Dell restore CD is pretty much the exact same
thing as the XP CD.

No, not even close. Whether Dell's or any other OEMs, a Restore CD is very
different from an installation CD.

 

[Shenan Stanley]

As far as I know, the Dell restore CD is pretty much the exact same
thing as the XP CD.

No, not even close. Whether Dell's or any other OEMs, a Restore CD
is very different from an installation CD.

It really depends whether or not Dell's process (and it depends on when you
got your Dell, what type of Dell it is, what restoration option you chose,
what country you are in and who knows what else..) created a true Windows XP
CD (and called it a restoration CD) or if it created a restoration CD
(image/other) instead.

I have seen both a restoration CD set created with such applications and
actual Windows XP installation CDs. The nomenclature is sometimes
misleading - which makes it harder to identify what someone has.

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

Ken Blake, MVP wrote:

It really depends whether or not Dell's process (and it depends on
when you got your Dell, what type of Dell it is, what restoration
option you chose, what country you are in and who knows what else..)
created a true Windows XP CD (and called it a restoration CD) or if
it created a restoration CD (image/other) instead.

As far as I'm concerned, a restore CD is essentially an image of what's on
the installed hard drive, and its purpose is to let you restore that image
so you can put the system back to factory-delivered condition.. It's very
different from
an installation CD.

Over the years, some Dell systems have come with restore CDs, some with
installation CDs, and some with both. Last I heard, Dell was supplying
restore CDs, but also making installation CDs available for an additional
$10. Whether they are still doing that, I don't know.

I have personally never seen Dell offer an installation CD and call it a
restore CD, but if you say you have, I'll have to believe you. But if that's
what they've done, they are misusing the accepted terminology, and that's
bound to confuse people. Besides, it wouldn't seem to be in their interest
to offer the more valuable kind of CD and call it by the less valuable
name; the other way around would be more likely.

Calling an installation CD a restore CD reminds me of the story (perhaps
apocryphal, but none the less a good story) about Abraham Lincoln and a
speech he gave one day. During his speech, he asked the audience "If you
call its tail a leg, how many legs does a dog have?" Everyone in the
audience shouted out "five."

"Nope," Lincoln replied, "Four. Calling it a leg doesn't make it a leg."

 

[Guest]

Unlike IDE hds,SATA or RAID doesnt copy very well,+ sometimes (not always),
you need to run the F6 option to install the SATA controller
drivers,hence,even
though you copied files,the drivers still need to be configured,something
done
BEFORE xp is installed.

 

[Rick Rogers]

Rubbish, SATA and RAID copy just as well, and usually faster, than EIDE
technologies.

--
Best of Luck,

Rick Rogers, aka "Nutcase" - Microsoft MVP

Windows help - www.rickrogers.org

 

[Gene K]

Questions? Windows will only boot from Drive C so that means that, as a
minimum, at least the XP Boot.ini file be present on the Drive/Partition C.
The rest of XP can be on another partition. I don't understand why it was
necessary to create two partitions on the new drive and then image your old
C drive to K and then restore it to J. If the restoration did not erase the
image from K, then both J and K are exact duplicates of each other plus C. I
do not really understand what happens when you switch the cable headers on
SATA drives since I have been told that SATA cables do not provide jumpers
plus do not provide a Master/Slave relationship. I can only presume that the
first connector would be labeled Drive No. 0 and the second would be Drive 1
[with Drive No. 0 functioning as the master and Drive No. 1 functioning as
the slave.
With all that said all, major drive manufacturers [Maxtor, Seagate, Western
Digital, etc] provide both software and instructions to acomplish what you
wish to do so look for it on your drive manufacturers site.
Gene K

 

[Rick Rogers]

Windows will only boot from Drive C

No, this is incorrect. Windows could care less what the drive letter is on
either the installation partion (boot volume) or the system drive. The drive
letters are merely a convention, Windows needs only a system (active drive)
and a boot (installation) volume (often the same partition/drive, but they
don't have to be), the letters assigned to both or either can be completely
arbitrary.

--
Best of Luck,

Rick Rogers, aka "Nutcase" - Microsoft MVP

Windows help - www.rickrogers.org

 

[Esha]

What was the purpose of changes I made?
I had a single 250GB drive on my new system. I also had an old nonworking
system with a good 150GB HD. I always use C partition for programs only. And
it shouldn't be very big in size. I think 30-40GB is more than enough. My
other systems have 20GB size of the primary partitions and it's enough.
So I decided to format 150GB drive, to create 2 partitions - one is for the
primary (small size) and remaining volume for the second partition. Move my
current stuff from a 250GB drive to the small partition on the 150GB drive,
make a new small partition bootable. In this case I was going to end with 3
partitions 30GB primary, 120GB on the same drive for data, and the third one
250GB for data too.
I did similar things several times with other machines, with both IDE and
SATA drives and never had any problem. I could disconnect my second drive
and connect it back without any complaints from Windows.
Now Windows and Ghost can see both drives, all partitions, but by some
reason I'm not allowed to disconnect the second (250 GB) drive. I'm not
allowed to delete everything from it. I'm not sure, but it looks like
Windows uses the partition on drive J. If so, why I cannot delete files from
C: and change letter?
I thought that after I disconnect my 250GB drive, Windows will rearrange
letter, will assign C: to the partition on J: and then after I connect back
the drive I will be able to clean it and start to use as an additional drive
for data.
Something is different from I had with my previous systems.

Esha

 

[John John]

Check the active status of the partition on which you want to boot. "No
Bootable device found" may indicate that there are no active partitions
to boot from.

John

What was the purpose of changes I made?
I had a single 250GB drive on my new system. I also had an old nonworking
system with a good 150GB HD. I always use C partition for programs only. And
it shouldn't be very big in size. I think 30-40GB is more than enough. My
other systems have 20GB size of the primary partitions and it's enough.
So I decided to format 150GB drive, to create 2 partitions - one is for the
primary (small size) and remaining volume for the second partition. Move my
current stuff from a 250GB drive to the small partition on the 150GB drive,
make a new small partition bootable. In this case I was going to end with 3
partitions 30GB primary, 120GB on the same drive for data, and the third one
250GB for data too.
I did similar things several times with other machines, with both IDE and
SATA drives and never had any problem. I could disconnect my second drive
and connect it back without any complaints from Windows.
Now Windows and Ghost can see both drives, all partitions, but by some
reason I'm not allowed to disconnect the second (250 GB) drive. I'm not
allowed to delete everything from it. I'm not sure, but it looks like
Windows uses the partition on drive J. If so, why I cannot delete files from
C: and change letter?
I thought that after I disconnect my 250GB drive, Windows will rearrange
letter, will assign C: to the partition on J: and then after I connect back
the drive I will be able to clean it and start to use as an additional drive
for data.
Something is different from I had with my previous systems.

Esha

Questions? Windows will only boot from Drive C so that means that, as a
minimum, at least the XP Boot.ini file be present on the Drive/Partition
C.
The rest of XP can be on another partition. I don't understand why it was
necessary to create two partitions on the new drive and then image your
old
C drive to K and then restore it to J. If the restoration did not erase
the
image from K, then both J and K are exact duplicates of each other plus C.
I
do not really understand what happens when you switch the cable headers on
SATA drives since I have been told that SATA cables do not provide jumpers
plus do not provide a Master/Slave relationship. I can only presume that
the
first connector would be labeled Drive No. 0 and the second would be Drive
1
[with Drive No. 0 functioning as the master and Drive No. 1 functioning as
the slave.
With all that said all, major drive manufacturers [Maxtor, Seagate,
Western
Digital, etc] provide both software and instructions to acomplish what you
wish to do so look for it on your drive manufacturers site.
Gene K

 

[Esha]

Thank you.
I checked this via Disk Manager before I asked for help here and it was not
active. Via right click I set it active. But it did not solve the problem

Esha

Check the active status of the partition on which you want to boot. "No
Bootable device found" may indicate that there are no active partitions to
boot from.

John

What was the purpose of changes I made?
I had a single 250GB drive on my new system. I also had an old nonworking
system with a good 150GB HD. I always use C partition for programs only.
And it shouldn't be very big in size. I think 30-40GB is more than
enough. My other systems have 20GB size of the primary partitions and
it's enough.
So I decided to format 150GB drive, to create 2 partitions - one is for
the primary (small size) and remaining volume for the second partition.
Move my current stuff from a 250GB drive to the small partition on the
150GB drive, make a new small partition bootable. In this case I was
going to end with 3 partitions 30GB primary, 120GB on the same drive for
data, and the third one 250GB for data too.
I did similar things several times with other machines, with both IDE and
SATA drives and never had any problem. I could disconnect my second drive
and connect it back without any complaints from Windows.
Now Windows and Ghost can see both drives, all partitions, but by some
reason I'm not allowed to disconnect the second (250 GB) drive. I'm not
allowed to delete everything from it. I'm not sure, but it looks like
Windows uses the partition on drive J. If so, why I cannot delete files
from C: and change letter?
I thought that after I disconnect my 250GB drive, Windows will rearrange
letter, will assign C: to the partition on J: and then after I connect
back the drive I will be able to clean it and start to use as an
additional drive for data.
Something is different from I had with my previous systems.

Esha

Questions? Windows will only boot from Drive C so that means that, as a
minimum, at least the XP Boot.ini file be present on the Drive/Partition
C.
The rest of XP can be on another partition. I don't understand why it was
necessary to create two partitions on the new drive and then image your
old
C drive to K and then restore it to J. If the restoration did not erase
the
image from K, then both J and K are exact duplicates of each other plus
C. I
do not really understand what happens when you switch the cable headers
on
SATA drives since I have been told that SATA cables do not provide
jumpers
plus do not provide a Master/Slave relationship. I can only presume that
the
first connector would be labeled Drive No. 0 and the second would be
Drive 1
[with Drive No. 0 functioning as the master and Drive No. 1 functioning
as
the slave.
With all that said all, major drive manufacturers [Maxtor, Seagate,
Western
Digital, etc] provide both software and instructions to acomplish what
you
wish to do so look for it on your drive manufacturers site.
Gene K