Drive selection for booting up

[1beaut]

I recently took over my son's old computer (he got the new one) and he has a 200 gig Maxtor in it.  I took my 60 gig Seagate out of my old computer and installed it in my son's old computer.  I made the Seagate the Master and the Maxtor the Slave.  I'm not that computer savvy and I found out later that this is probably not a good move but the damage was minimal.  I just needed to get some drivers for everything to work.  Anyway my question is, can I select or change which drive to boot up from?  I went into bios and there was a section that allowed you to set the boot up order and then I found a section that allowed you to set the priority of the hard drives.  If I put the Maxtor at the top of the list, will this allow me to boot up from the slave drive?

[meta1203]

What happens when you try to boot after setting it?

[grandpa_simpson]

If I put the Maxtor at the top of the list, will this allow me to boot up from the slave drive?

As long as there is a bootable partition on the drive, you can boot off either one..


Is there an operating system installed on each drive ? If so, there's a better option, besides changing the boot order..

[Allan]

Yes, you can select which drive is at the top of the boot order in bios - but you cannot take a drive from one system and expect another system to boot to it.

[1beaut]

Yes there is an XP operating system on both drives, I'm curious Grampa_Simpson, what is the easier method?

[1beaut]

Meta1203- I didn't try it, wanted to make sure it would work before I did.

[Allan]

I know you want to hear what you want to hear, but let me say it again. You cannot take a drive from one system and expect another to boot to it. It will not work.

[grandpa_simpson]

As allen said, you cannot simply take a drive out of a computer (with an OS installed) and expect it to work on another computer.  Number one, you have MS licensing issues if the OS is an OEM version, second (only if it is a purchased copy of windows), a repair installation will have to be done if the hardware is too different, after the drive is installed.

At any rate, the other method is by modifying the boot.ini file directly or, booting off of a Windows XP Recovery Console CD, and using the bootcfg /rebuild command, which will modify the file for you.

Just make sure that the boot.ini file that you modify is on the drive that is set first in the boot order.

[Allan]

Licensing issues have nothing to do with it. The OS makes note of all hardware and will not start on a system that is not completely identical to the first.

[grandpa_simpson]

I was trying to say that even if a repair install could be done after the drive is put into another system, there would be a license issue, if it's an oem copy of windows.

[1beaut]

ok guys, I hear you.  But what I am saying is that the 200 gig Maxtor was the original drive for the computer I am using (my sons old one).  What I did was take My old hard drive (the Seagate) and installed it into the computer I am now using (my sons old one). I made my drive (the Seagate) master and the original drive (the Maxtor) the slave.  When I started the computer, It Worked!  I just had some driver issues which I took care of. 

What I want to do now is have the ability of booting up from either drive.  I know the Seagate will work because I am running it right now.  I know the Maxtor will work because it is the original drive for this computer.

fyi - I really appreciate the input from all.

[grandpa_simpson]

You'll need to either use Recovery Console or edit the boot.ini file directly, as I said.  If RC doesn't come on your XP installation CD, you'll have to download an ISO copy of it and burn it to CD.. You should have RC handy somewhere if you're using XP.

Try this.. on the disk that is currently set as priority in the boot order (the one you are booted on right now) go to START, Control Panel, system, Advanced Tab...Under "start up and recovery" click on "settings", click on the edit button, then copy and paste the line below directly under the last line in the file you see... Click "file" at the top and click "save"....now restart and when you boot this time, you should see a menu giving you a choice of which OS you want to boot from...  I haven't done this for a long time, but I think the line I provided will do the trick..

multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP (2nd Hard Drive)" /fastdetect /NoExecute=OptIn

[1beaut]

Grampa_Simpson - thank-you so much, it works like a charm.  That is soooo much easier than going in bios and changing the drive priority everytime I  wanted to change drives.

problem solved.

thanks to all who contributed.

[Geek-9pm]

Listen to Allan. Hes is right on.

Even if both computers were the same make and even the same model series,  slight variations in hardware will stop the Windows system from booting correctly.

Unlike a a Live Linux CD, windows on a hard drive is not a portable OS that can switch hardware abstraction at boot time.

EDIT: I was too late!

[grandpa_simpson]

He said he had some driver problems that he resolved, obviously there was no issue with the hal driver.  In any case, I don't disagree with allan.