Trouble booting from SATA

[Terry]

I have two SATA drives that are the same size and brand. I can't tell
by looking at them which has the boot information and which is just
full. When I boot they both work fine, but the boot drive is d:

This was working fine until I got a new SATA drive. I want to dump
everything (except OS) from both drives to the new larger one.

Also because one of the SATA controllers is behind my video card,
unplugging the cable from the mobo would be a pain especially when you
do trial and error hardware upgrades like I do.

Anyway.....I was trying to figure out which drive has the boot info on
it. When I unplug one of the controller cables (A) from the drive
(and leave it plugged into the mobo) I get a boot from CD option and
pressing enter does nothing.

If I plug that drive back in and try the other one (B), I
get.....Windows could not start because of computer disk hardware
problem. Could not read from the selected boot disk. Check boot path
and disk hardware.

I assume that (B) is the boot disk and because it was drive d: it is
now trying to become drive c:.

Am I even close?
Will unplugging a drive, and leaving the cable on the mobo, that is
not the boot drive cause a boot fail?

Thank you for your time.

 

[Andy]

With both drives connected, boot into Windows and run the Disk
Management snap-in. Check the status of the partitions, and note which
one is identified as Boot, and which one is System. I'm assuming the
those partitions are on different physical disk drives, which is why
disconnecting either drive results in failure to boot to Windows. The
System partition contains the Windows boot files (ntldr, ntdected.com,
and boot.ini), while the Boot partition contains the Windows, Program
Files, and Documents and Settings folders.

 

[Terry]

Hi,
How do you use Disk Management snap-in? I can right click a drive
letter and get drive properties, but I don't see anything about any
boot information or system information.

If this matters, until a couple of weeks ago neither drive had ever
been used as the boot drive and neither has ever had Windows
installed. I lost my boot drive so I installed Windows on an already
pretty full disk.

Like I have said, I really don't know how to check this, but I don't
think the system and the boot would be different.

Thanks

 

[pen]

Hi,
How do you use Disk Management snap-in? I can right click a drive
letter and get drive properties, but I don't see anything about any
boot information or system information.

If this matters, until a couple of weeks ago neither drive had ever
been used as the boot drive and neither has ever had Windows
installed. I lost my boot drive so I installed Windows on an already
pretty full disk.

Like I have said, I really don't know how to check this, but I don't
think the system and the boot would be different.

Thanks

Disk Management is found at control panel\administrative tools\computer
management\storage\disk management

 

[Timothy Daniels]

Disk Management is found at control panel\administrative tools\computer
management\storage\disk management

It can also be reached at:
rt-clk MyComputer/Manage/DiskManagement

*TimDaniels*

 

[Terry]

That is exactly what has happened. Screenshot: http://tinypic.com/view.php?pic=6b3h4i1

Now how do I fix it?

Thanks everyone.

 

[Andy]

Comments in line (go all the way to the bottom):

That is exactly what has happened. Screenshot: http://tinypic.com/view.php?pic=6b3h4i1

Now how do I fix it?

If you want Disk 1 to be bootable so its partition becomes both System
and Boot, do the following:
1. Make Disk 1's partition active by right clicking in the rectangular
box that contains (Boot), and selecting the menu item Set Active.
2. Copy hidden files C:\ntdetect.com, C:\ntldr, and C:\boot.ini to
D:\. You can open a CMD prompt box, and use the commands
xcopy /h c:\nt*.* d:\ and xcopy /h c:\boot.ini d:\
3. Edit D:\boot.ini, replacing both instances of partition(2) with
partition(1). You can use the command sequence Start -> Run ->
d:boot.ini
4. Remove Disk 0, and connect Disk 1 in its place.
5. If you're lucky, Windows XP will boot.
6. Otherwise, perform a repair of the Windows XP installation to place
a proper boot sector on the new Disk 0. I'm not sure if this is going
to be a straight foward operation. You might start by running the
recovery console, and see if it's possible to run the fixboot command.

Thanks everyone.

This is Disk 1 (Boot partition).
This is Disk 0 (System partition).

 

[Terry]

Thanks for you suggestions. I plan to just reformat both drives using
RAID after I get another computer running. I think I can live with
having both drives plugged in until then.

Thanks