Two hard drives, one OS problem

L

Lomandriel

New Member
Hey pplz, I have a problem. Basically I have two hard drives:

Hard drive a : 120 gb Western digital - two partitions : C drive(10 gb ) and D drive which consists of the rest.

Hard drive b : 320 gb WD - Two partitions : F drive(34 gb roughly + windows OS was chosen to be installed here) and I drive (rest of space).

Basically I had some problems back awhile ago, first hard drive a dying, or so it seems, basically I figured out that no matter what I did the windows would corrupt when i installed on hard drive a, images were getting distorted. Moved everything off onto hard drive b at the time since it was new.

Following that I went to reinstall windows through the dos windows setup screen for win xp. I basically deleted and repartitioned hard drive a to wipe the old OS and information off there before reinstalling windows on the new hard drive "b", partition F.

Anyway I basically have a problem now, I forgot the advice of removing hard drive a when installing windows onto hard drive b. I think thats why now, when I remove hard drive a, windows wont boot up. This is despite the fact that window's install path was selected to be on hard drive b: partition F. Removing hard drive a renders the OS unable to boot when i turn the computer on.

Ok so i plug back in the sata cable for hard drive a, wollah OS boots.

I want to know why the comps doing this? I chose hard drive b - partition F, why (i assume)have system files crucial to booting up/running the OS still been placed on hard drive a?

I did clear the whole hard drive a, so does windows install files onto the first hard drive regardless of where the windows installation destination was selected?

Anyway I tried a "view all protected system files" option in explorer, and a few files showed up on partition c of hard drive a: eg: boot.cfg, NTDETEC, MSDOS, AUTOEXEC, System volume information folder(cant access), recycler.

I took it these are what helps the second hdd boot up from dos. I copied them to the same partition as windows(f partition on hard drive b) and removed the sata cable from hard drive a. Booted up the comp and nope, it still doesnt boot up, still says something about missing the system boot thing.

So yeah what can I do to change my computer so that windows is only self reliant on hard drive B/partition F to boot Up? Without reinstalling windows/having to redo installed programs, settings etc... if its possible?

My hard drive b is also running low on space, I really need a new 320 gb or so hard drive. I only have two hard drive sata slots since my comps 3 yrs old. So yeah i needa get rid of the first hdd, but I really dont wanna redo the windows and settings/personalised things, I mean after all the actaul windows core files are all on the hard drive which is staying in the comp... so it would suck having to redo themc os of some minor files on the first hard drive that are required...



Please help!And sorry for the long post!
 
Bow you see the problem of trying to custom install Windows all over the place. For having the second drive as a stand alone you would first unplug the first drive and install Windows on the first primary partition being the OS partition there. The second would be primary a storage and backup partition if not set aside for a dual boot of another OS. With 500gb ide drives coming down in price using the 320gb as the OS drive and adding a second large drive for storage works much better then installing to second partitions on second drives.
 
This must be set in order to boot:

1) it must be a primary partition
2) it must be set to active (can be done in disk management)
3) ntldr, boot.ini and ntdetect.com must be present
 
The msdos.sys and autoexec.bat files point at XP Pro as the version of Windows there. Those would be found at the root of the first primary of the host drive. One fast method for seeing everything working correctly would be to plan on having Windows on the first primary after the 120gb is removed for a clean install there. Since the boot files were originally copied to the 120gb you are going to have to perform a fresh install of Windows to see those installed on the new drive.
 
tyttebøvs said:
you don't need to reinstall windows, to make it boot from another partition
Click to expand...

The mbr, ntldr, msdos.sys, autoexec.bat files are located on the drive about to be removed from the system. A clean install of Windows will be need for the new mbr and boot information when that happens. The only time for installing Windows on a drive other then the boot drive is mainly seen when dual or multibooting different versions of Windows or different OSs along with MS.
 
when you initialize a harddrive in windows, a mbr is written to the disk. so this already exists. XP doesn't use msdos or autoexec for anything.

ntldr, boot.ini and ntdetect.com can just be copied to the drive/partition you want to boot from, and make this partition active
 
You have to create a new mbr not simply copy files from the root of one drive to another. The dos system files seen in XP Pro are used for logging onto old Fat based networks explaining why those are seen in that version of XP. :rolleyes:

The recovery consolde commands are used to correct problems seen when boot information is lost on the boot drive which seems to be an item considered for removal which would then require a repair install of Windows to see a new working mbr on the 320gb drive to make that the stand alone OS drive.

If you do decide to remove the older 120gb Lomandriel you will want to follow the steps outlined in the article at the link here for performing a repair install of XP to see the new mbr created. This method preserves the files, folders, and programs installed while sometime needing a reistall of device drivers like video and sound. It would be an effective approach to preserve the current installation there. http://www.michaelstevenstech.com/XPrepairinstall.htm
 
as i said, when you initialize the drive, all the nessesary boot strap code is written to the mbr. When the partition is formatted, all nessesary boot strap code is written to the boot record of the partition.

so, copy the boot files, and make the (primary) partition active

Edit: might I say, i've done this a dozen of times
 
but if you're afraid that they doesn't cotain the corrent code, use fixmbr to fix mbr, and fixboot to fix the partition.

The're are handy, if other systems have been installed, so incorrect code is present in mbr or partition boot record
 
The repair install method is one thing that will actually work far better in the long run for that. Having dual booted OSs and repaired installations when swapping drives out of a case having the installer create the new boot information during the repair process never fails. The problem most commonly seen when cloning drives is the lack of a working mbr to start with there. Files are simply copied. Windows has to install them to see them actually made active.
 
Ok sorry guys im a little confused over what to do, since both of you hvae been going back and forth on how to solve this situation(but i appreciate it).

Ok just to clarify what I'm exactly after, please keep in mind this is only a "IF ITS POSSIBLE" , if it isn't let me know and the best course of action.

The second hard drive: 320 gb i want to preserve the windows installation there. Meaning I want (if possible like i said above) to preserve file settings, programs i"ve installed, startup run commands , you know the lot.

I want to change my current windows setup so that i can leave the first hard drive in there for now(even though its faultY) until i get that new hard drive. So basically I want the windows to be totally reliant on the second hard drive: the 320 gb hard drive where windows is currently installed on partition F. SO taht when the time comes i can just slip out the 120gb hard drive, put in a new hard drive, and windows will still boot as normal : and wollah i have a new hdd just to store things now, install programs onto there(if i choose to etc).

I caught onto something about disk management, i went in there and the following details might be useful:

Partition C(120 gb hard drive -drive a) = healthy (system)

but partition F on the 320 gb = healthy (boot)

Thats listed in disk management, any use? All partitions are listed as NTFS and type "basic".

SO yeah with all of what i've listed in mind, especially how i want to preserve my windows/major settings and installed programs,can someone sum up basically what i have to do?

But yeah sorry i didnt understand some of what you guys were going over earlier, If you give me instructions i can probbaly figure out how to carry them out to solve this problem, otherwise im not a technically comp whizz sorta thing, so yeah please keep that in mind with the instructions.

Appreciate the help.
 
Assuming these two drives are ide hard drives by setting the 320gb as master at the end of the ide cable and having the 120 unplugged temporarily you can make the 320 a stand alone drive by performing a repair install of Windows. The method outlined in the article seen at the link posted warlier will give you a step by step to proceed while preserving all of your current settings and programs installed.

This will see a totally new boot sector writen on the 320 since the original is still on the 120. This is the only way you are going to see the 320 boot on it's own without totally reinstalling Windows there. The 120 can be slaved on the middle connector afterwards for retrieving files from it. But that's the fast and effective way to go there.
 
Umm when you mean by IDE im assuming the old school ribbon cable?

IF so im actually on SaTA. THe 320gb is a sata2 but its on my old school mobo abit nf7s which is just Sata1. I think the 120 gb is just an ordinary Sata1 hard drive too.

DOes this change things as to how i can preserve the settings/installation?
 
The repair install would automatically wirte a new mbr on the 320gb drive. But you will need to set that as the default boot device not just hard drive first cd rom second but move that drive to the top of the list of hard drives in the hardware configuration section if your bios has that. This make the 320gb the new primary seeing a working mbr installed to it.

The repair install generally saves everything since that simply replaces the basic system files and doesn't change too much else. A few settings may have to be redone especially if video and sound drivers need a reinstall. But the important despite any minor annoyances is having the 320 seen as a stand alone drive rather then being dependent on the 120 for boot information there.

(Flat ribbon cables for ide drives? :eek: I couldn't have those here. I simply have to go for some Antec UV white dual nylon wrapped round ide cables that can take a beating and be moved into a new case instead of flat ribbon cables that get hardened up and lose conductivity often. :D )

http://www.antec.com/productImage.php?ProdID=77238&SetZone=en

http://www.antec.com/us/productDetails.php?ProdID=77238#
 
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