|
Home > Archive > Backup Software > April 2005 > Why can't I have 2 active bootable disks on the same machine with some Windows?
You are viewing an archived Text-only version of the thread.
To view this thread in it's original format and/or if you want to reply to
this thread please [click here]
| Author |
Why can't I have 2 active bootable disks on the same machine with some Windows?
|
|
| Mark Fineman 2005-03-23, 5:49 pm |
| Several of the disk image, disk clone, and disk backup
programs that I have looked at recently have warnings similar to:
DO NOT REBOOT THE COMPUTER WITH A CLONED HARD DRIVE.
To do so may alter settings of the Windows operating system.
Some of the programs specifically say that you shouldn't have
more than one active bootable drive in the system.
I think that the statement should be stronger as I think
that merely making sure that there is only one bootable disk won't
solve the problem completely.
Here is my reasoning:
I have seen this problem on my Windows 98 Second Edition system
with IDE drives. I didn't SEE any problems when I alternated between
the IDE Primary Master and the SCSI drive, but that doesn't
mean there were no problems.
I thought that the problem with Windows 98 SE and earlier
was that a some point in the boot sequence "C:" was the
Master drive, or perhaps the Primary Master drive, and not the drive
that the boot block was on, although at the end of the
boot sequence the "C:" drive is that the system was booted
from.
With other versions of windows the file NTLDR
has lines like:
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(4)\WINN
T35="Windows NT..."
Which seem to specify a fixed unit location regardless of
where the system was booted from. (Although I'm not sure what
happens if the system has PATA, SATA, and SCSI drives: does
the meaning of "multi(0)" change depending on which drive
is booted from?)
Therefore, it seems to be that the problem is not limited to
having 2 active bootable disks in the system, although that
makes it more likely for problems to occur.
----== Posted via webservertalk.com - Unlimited-Uncensored-Secure Usenet News==----
http://www.webservertalk.com The #1 Newsgroup Service in the World! 120,000+ Newsgroups
----= East and West-Coast Server Farms - Total Privacy via Encryption =----
| |
| rohbeck@yahoo.com 2005-03-23, 8:45 pm |
| I replaced a hard drive in an XP system some time ago, with an
identical spare. With a couple of retries, I was able to pull a
complete image off the failing drive. After I copied it to the new
drive and used that one as the master, XP ran normally, but encrypted
files were no longer accessible. Everything else works fine.
| |
| zigipha@hotmail.com 2005-03-31, 5:46 pm |
| I believe another problem is with win2k/win xp. When you boot off of a
drive, it assumes that it is the C drive, and will label the logical
drives on the physical boot drive, then the logical drives in the
secondary physical drives in sequential order. it puts this labeling in
the master boot record. If after you clone the hard drive, you boot off
of one of the new drive, the OS will relabel the logical partitions on
the old-boot now-secondary drive. You verify the new boot drive is ok,
take it out, put the old-boot now new-boot drive into the primary
position and you cann't boot off of it cuz its not labelled as the C
drive. you need to reset the master boot record to be able to boot off
of the bootable drive that was in the secondary position.
rohbeck@yahoo.com wrote:
> I replaced a hard drive in an XP system some time ago, with an
> identical spare. With a couple of retries, I was able to pull a
> complete image off the failing drive. After I copied it to the new
> drive and used that one as the master, XP ran normally, but encrypted
> files were no longer accessible. Everything else works fine.
| |
|
| Ahhh... 98/SE won't recognize NTFS. Therein lies part of the problem
"Mark Fineman" <mark.s.fineman@verizon.net> wrote in message
news:oru3415k8ntg3hkchn04gtuo5cjbcqcbi0@
4ax.com...
> Several of the disk image, disk clone, and disk backup
> programs that I have looked at recently have warnings similar to:
> DO NOT REBOOT THE COMPUTER WITH A CLONED HARD DRIVE.
> To do so may alter settings of the Windows operating system.
>
> Some of the programs specifically say that you shouldn't have
> more than one active bootable drive in the system.
>
> I think that the statement should be stronger as I think
> that merely making sure that there is only one bootable disk won't
> solve the problem completely.
>
> Here is my reasoning:
>
> I have seen this problem on my Windows 98 Second Edition system
> with IDE drives. I didn't SEE any problems when I alternated between
> the IDE Primary Master and the SCSI drive, but that doesn't
> mean there were no problems.
>
> I thought that the problem with Windows 98 SE and earlier
> was that a some point in the boot sequence "C:" was the
> Master drive, or perhaps the Primary Master drive, and not the drive
> that the boot block was on, although at the end of the
> boot sequence the "C:" drive is that the system was booted
> from.
>
> With other versions of windows the file NTLDR
> has lines like:
> [operating systems]
> multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(4)\WINN
T35="Windows NT..."
>
> Which seem to specify a fixed unit location regardless of
> where the system was booted from. (Although I'm not sure what
> happens if the system has PATA, SATA, and SCSI drives: does
> the meaning of "multi(0)" change depending on which drive
> is booted from?)
>
> Therefore, it seems to be that the problem is not limited to
> having 2 active bootable disks in the system, although that
> makes it more likely for problems to occur.
>
> ----== Posted via webservertalk.com - Unlimited-Uncensored-Secure Usenet News==----
> http://www.webservertalk.com The #1 Newsgroup Service in the World! 120,000+
Newsgroups
> ----= East and West-Coast Server Farms - Total Privacy via Encryption =----
| |
| dale@nowhere.not 2005-04-11, 5:48 pm |
| You need a boot manager, since only one primary partition can be
active at one time.
A drives Master Boot Record (MBR) normally points to the active,
bootable partition where the actual startup programs live. A boot
manager will replace MBR information with a menu that will point to
each of the configured and bootable partitions.
I recommend BootItNG from http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/. With
this program, you can boot to as many operating systems as you want,
and the bootable partitions don't have to be on only one hard drive.
I am booting two Windows XP NTFS partitions, and two different Linux
distributions. They are located on two hard drives.
BootItNG also provides partition imaging, drive cloning and
partitioning.
Dale
On Wed, 23 Mar 2005 18:56:53 -0500, Mark Fineman
<mark.s.fineman@verizon.net> wrote:
>Several of the disk image, disk clone, and disk backup
>programs that I have looked at recently have warnings similar to:
> DO NOT REBOOT THE COMPUTER WITH A CLONED HARD DRIVE.
> To do so may alter settings of the Windows operating system.
>
>Some of the programs specifically say that you shouldn't have
>more than one active bootable drive in the system.
>
>I think that the statement should be stronger as I think
>that merely making sure that there is only one bootable disk won't
>solve the problem completely.
>
>Here is my reasoning:
>
>I have seen this problem on my Windows 98 Second Edition system
>with IDE drives. I didn't SEE any problems when I alternated between
>the IDE Primary Master and the SCSI drive, but that doesn't
>mean there were no problems.
>
>I thought that the problem with Windows 98 SE and earlier
>was that a some point in the boot sequence "C:" was the
>Master drive, or perhaps the Primary Master drive, and not the drive
>that the boot block was on, although at the end of the
>boot sequence the "C:" drive is that the system was booted
>from.
>
>With other versions of windows the file NTLDR
>has lines like:
> [operating systems]
> multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(4)\WINN
T35="Windows NT..."
>
>Which seem to specify a fixed unit location regardless of
>where the system was booted from. (Although I'm not sure what
>happens if the system has PATA, SATA, and SCSI drives: does
>the meaning of "multi(0)" change depending on which drive
>is booted from?)
>
>Therefore, it seems to be that the problem is not limited to
>having 2 active bootable disks in the system, although that
>makes it more likely for problems to occur.
>
>----== Posted via webservertalk.com - Unlimited-Uncensored-Secure Usenet News==----
>http://www.webservertalk.com The #1 Newsgroup Service in the World! 120,000+ Newsgroups
>----= East and West-Coast Server Farms - Total Privacy via Encryption =----
|
|
|
|
|