Changing sATA HDD to active partition in Windows 2000?

[Lanfo]

Hello,

I'm not sure if I am posting this is the right forum but here goes.

I just recently bought an sATA HDD, it was my first time working with sATA, I had never really worked with any SCSI devices either, except JazzDrives and I never used those to boot from.

Anyway here is what my system consists of:

Windows 2000 PRO w/SP4
Asus A7N8X-E Dlx. BIOS 1013
SiI 3112a onboard sATA-Raid BIOS-4.2.50 | Drv-1.0.0.50
sATA 74gb WD Raptor (Set as 1st Boot device) F:\
IDE 60gb WD CaviarSE (Primary-Slave)C:\(Active Partition)
LiteON 52xCD-RW (Secondary Slave)
LiteON 16xDVD-ROM (Secondary Master)

Nothing is set as Primary Master.

Right now I have the PC running in dual boot, (both Win2k sp4). Since I have gotten all my data off of the old HDD and backed-up I would like to format the IDE drive.

The only thing is the IDE HDD is the active drive (has the boot files on it and is set as C:\, sATA is F:\)

My question is would it be safe for me to take the boot files from C:\ and put them on my F:\ drive, then reformat C:\ ? Are there any other files I need to save from the active drive, like MSDOS.SYS, IO.SYS, AUTOEXEC.BAT and CONFIG.SYS?

Can I use FDISK to set F:\ to the active partition without formatting the drive?

I'm sure there was probably a better way to set up my drives but like I said it was my first time, and instead of reading a manual/tutorial or asking for help before I did the install I just kind of learned as I went lol.

(Could I just leave the boot files on C: and erase everything else, I have set boot.ini to boot to the OS I want)

Thanks for your help

 

[cdogg]

As a quick test, disconnect the IDE drive and see if the system will boot off just the SATA drive. If so, then at least you know the OS partition on that drive is being detected properly.

Assuming that works, then I would say that your "dual-boot" configuration is not properly set. If it was, you would get the dual-boot prompt to select which system (drive) you wanted to boot from at startup.

Do not attempt to move any boot files just yet, or at the very least, keep backups of the ones you replace if you decide to try it. There could also be an inappropriate setting in the boot.ini file (maybe not pointing to the right drive). The boot sector on the SATA drive might also be the problem, as perhaps it was not modified during installation to reflect the other drive's existence.


~cdogg
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[Lanfo]

Right now it does go to the dual boot selection when I startup, I think I may know which entry in boot.ini is associated with the OS on my sATA HDD.

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINNT
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINNT="Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional" /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT="Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional" /fastdetect

I think this is the line pointing to the SATA drive:
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT="Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional" /fastdetect

I may be wrong but I thought that when you go to the dual boot select screen, the OS that boots if you let it time out is the default one, (I just let the timer run down to see what OS it would boot to). Is that right?

I'm going to try your suggestion now, but I'm going to put boot.ini, ntldr and ntdetect.com in the sATA root dir. Right now it dose not have any boot files.

I still have the original boot files in the IDE drive.

Thanks for taking the time to help me out

 

[wolluf]

Lanfo,

multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINNT="Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional" /fastdetect

will be the SATA installation (assuming you installed 2k on it with the IDE installation already present and in the machine - which you must have done to get dual boot).

To boot from the SATA drive you will need to create a boot sector as well as copying those three files. You can do this by running recovery console and using fixboot X: command (where X: is the SATA drive as seen from recovery Console). If you're going to try booting without the IDE drive, I'd also put the pagefile on both drive letters - so 2k can create a least one of them (2k won't let you logon if there is no pagefile). You'll need your SATA drivers on a floppy when you boot from the 2k install CD to get into recovery console.

BUT, I'd recommend reinstalling 2k on the SATA drive from scratch - with the IDE drive disconnected - if you intend using this as your main installation from now on (you may be ok tweaking what you've got, but I'd suspect you'll run into some glitches down the line).

 

[Lanfo]

Hiya wolluf,

Thanks for responding,

I was kinda of expecting that I would need to do a re-install and I just did this install and I have not started installing any of my software yet, I've just done basic drivers and stuff. Also just made a bootable win2kpro CD with SP4 slipstreamed into it, and I put of bunch of drivers and software I need on the cd.

I'm pretty cluesless when it comes to bootsectors and boot files, but I'm kind of getting whats going on now. I just looked up boot sector definition.

I see now why I couldnt just take some boot files and throw them on to a disk to make it bootable, the way I understand it the files have to reside in a certain sector on the disk to work.

And I guess when you run Fixboot it has to format the sector, whats it do if there is data written to that sector already, move it? Is this why it's just safer to re-install.

Also if I run Fixboot on a drive that never had a boot sector will it create an MBR? Would I have to run Fixmbr to?

 

[wolluf]

Fixboot just writes a boot sector to the appropriate partition (doesn't affect data or the mbr - the drive will already have an mbr from having been partitioned and formatted by 2k). It works in conjunction with the 3 files boot.ini, ntldr and ntdetect.com, which have to exist in the root of the partition the boot sector is written to.

The reason its safer to reinstall (and with IDE drive disconnected) is because your 2 dual boot installations are interdependent - so when you remove one of them it will affect the other - and some affects may not be foreseen, and so cause problems - eg, pagefiles, changing drive letters (I have been through this scenario many times with various combinations of operating systems, and I never revamp an o/s which has ben part of dual/multi-boot to be my main operating system). But you may just be ok - I'd just recommend installing from scratch on SATA drive with IDE disconnected. When all done and dusted, reconnect IDE, and arrange drive letters as you want.

 

[Lanfo]

Thanks for the info, and thanks allot for the help, I'm about to do the install now.

I'll let ya know how it goes.

 

[Lanfo]

Got everthing set, and its running great. Thanks for the help.

 

[wolluf]

glad you're sorted