Bootable slave hard drive?

I've just got a new PC complete. My friend installed the HD from my old PC into it to use as storage. I have bootable partitions in that old drive. My question is....if I copy the drive info from the old 'C' partition boot.ini and paste it into the new boot.ini on the new 'C' drive, will I be able to boot from the other hard disk, or will I have a crippled computer?

Thanks in advance :major

 

The old info will be inappropriate any any case.

Your boot.ini will include something like

.....multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0) partition(1).....

multi() stands for the hard drive controller on the mobo and shouldn't be altered

disk() is used for SCSI and again shouldn't be altered

rdisk() specifies the hard disk where the OS is located. Numbering starts at zero

partition () specifies which partition contains the OS. Numbering perversely starts at 1.

You will need a separate line for each bootable partition.

 

Hey, thankyou very much for the detailed answer. You've set me on the right path i think.

So, I take it if I find out the correct physical address of the old hard drive I can manually enter that info into the boot.ini and boot from it again? I'm not sure if that's what you mean to say, but I will remain hopeful until I get another reply to this thread:confused

I still have wayyy too many questions about this, but don't want to inundate you all. Looking forward to any more replies.

Big thanks again Studiot!

 

Is there anyone can clarify for me please?

:major

 

Assuming your new pc currently has only one hard drive.

rdisk(0) will be the principal hard drive on your new system

rdisk(1) will be the first slave drive...from the old pc

rdisk(2) will be the second....


partition () will be the partition number where windows is located. This may not be the first partition if the pc had a recovery or diagnostic partition.

You will require a separate line in boot.ini for each operating system that you want to boot from.

Alternatively if you have a windows Cd you can simply connect the old drives as slaves and boot to the recovery console from the windows cd.

Then use the dos command

bootcfg / scan ............to find the other installations

bootcfg /add ..............to add new operating systems.

Boot.ini is edited automatically.

 

Thanks for the reply Studiot,

The boot.ini on the new C drive looks like this..

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect


and the boot.ini on the old drive (when it was in the old PC as the master drive) looks like this....

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Studio c" /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(4)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Internet f" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect

As you can see there are 3 bootable partitions on this drive. I much prefer the idea of manually editing the boot.ini file rather then using the windows disk. If you would be able to could you please edit this info so I may see how I must enter it into the new boot.ini to make the other drive partitions visible again?

Thanks again for your help, already the info you've given me is great, to the point where I almost know how to edit the boot.ini myself....however being such a computer noob I'm very weary about making the changes without the guidance of a more experienced technician. I would really appreciate if you could fulfill my request.

Thanks very much mate! :major

 

This will be a long post because I will be away on holiday after.

Firstly a bit more on how you get your boot menu.

When you first power up, control starts in the bios in ROM, which contains enough to produce the first screens you see.

When the bios is ready it passes control to a file NTLDR, on the root of the boot drive.

Amongst other things, NTLDR reads boot.ini and presents a boot menu if there is more than one bootable operating system listed.

Secondly a caveat.

If you transplant an XP hard drive into another system you have at best a 25% chance of it booting the system at all because of driver incompatibilities and activation issues.

It will be up to you to resolve these issues.

You can try this two ways. Either by connecting the old drive as Master, instead of the current new drive and resolving issues before the final transplant. Or you can wait till after the transplant and hope to resolve them later.

Either way it would be prudent to start in safe mode with these older versions of XP.

You can temporarily add switches to boot.ini to force this.

/safeboot:minimal ………….. normal safe mode

/safeboot:network

/safeboot:minimal (alternateshell) …….. safemode with command prompt

Your boot.ini should then look something like this


[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(2)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect /safeboot:minimal
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Studio c" /fastdetect /safeboot:minimal
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(4)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Internet f" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect /safeboot:minimal

If you copy and paste, use notepad not word.
If "studio c" and "internet f" refer to drive letters you may want to ammend these.

 

Thanks Studiot! I tried what u said and the OS's on the slave showed up. Unfortunately the PC crashed when I tried to boot one It's not a problem though. I will recover the data from the disk and do a fresh install.

Can anyone please tell me if I make a fresh install on the disk will it then be bootable?
:major

 

From memory the answer is yes. If you grab your data from one of the partitions on the second harddrive and do a fresh install of XP on that partition while connected to your new computer as slave it will be bootable.

The only problem with this is should the Master HD fail at some point in the future, I believe that you won't be able to just move the slave to master position and have it boot up properly. I think that some pointer is stored on the master drive. Anyone, please correct me if I am mistaken.

 

thank you It's not a prob that it won't run as the master. As I said, I only want the OS on there to test run freewares and stuff. Much appreciate your replies all :major