Swapping between drives

[Loose rivets]

My son has an ex-display AMD machine with two hard drives. He wishes to boot in the existing 64 bit mode and also in 32 bit using Vista or XP installed on the second drive as a new installation.

I used to change drives using the BIOS and it worked like magic, but now, it does not show two HDs, just the CD/DVD and one drive.

Having disconnected one drive to prepare the other and then reconnected it, is there a way to swap easily between the two when the operating systems are on two physically different HDs ?

[Saab Dastard]

Yes, it's called "dual-boot".

Lots of good advice on the MS website, and many others.

SD

[Loose rivets]

Yes, but everything seems to assume that the two OSs are on the same physical drive. Simply causing the bios to read the chosen disc is what I'm aiming for.

[Saab Dastard]

everything seems to assume that the two OSs are on the same physical drive

No, not really. It's up to you to choose the location when installing the OS.

Simply causing the bios to read the chosen disc is what I'm aiming for

You will live to be disappointed - the BIOS is nowt to do with selecting the OS.

Get both disks recognised in the BIOS, then leave it alone.

The system boots off the MBR (Master Boot Record). This is the first sector of the first hard drive (called the Master or HD0). This then points to the boot files on the active partition and starts the load of the OS.

In a dual-boot configuration, there is an extra step before the OS loads. The system still boots off the MBR, but before the OS is installed, the bootloader or boot manager is read, and this allows a choice of OS to be installed. Note that the boot manager is part of the (usually most recent) OS that was installed.

If you simply install an OS on disk 1, then do a standalone install of another OS on disk 2, having replaced disk 1, this will not work as a dual-boot configuration.

Why not read up about the boot process (http://tweakhomepc.virtualave.net/dual/bootsequence.html)

SD

[Keef]

Didn't know about that way of doing it - edumakashional here, innit!

I use GRUB for multiple-boot, I suppose because I know how to drive it. But I've only ever had it launch one Windows installation. That, and 9 different Linux distros.

[Loose rivets]

You will live to be disappointed - the BIOS is nowt to do with selecting the OS.Certainly you seem to be right with respect to modern BIOSes. I see no way at this time to achieve my desired results. However, should I be able to cause the computer BIOS to read from a selected physical drive, then it could only load the OS on that drive.

The problem is, that Dual Boot techniques, leave a certain intertwining of the drives that's there until shut-down. Everything I glean from your link substantiates this.

I want the drives to have total and utter autonomy.

Way back in early W98 days, I used to call on whichever drive I wanted during start up. It had the unanticipated and extraordinary characteristic of allowing one to see into the dead drive. So, it wasn't as dead as the setup seemed to imply. Furthermore, one could write files to that second drive.

When the next Windows offering came along, this was totally changed. The second drive could be used as a backup, but until it was called into play on boot up, it was invisible to the current system. This was a great disappointment, as the first set up had huge customer appeal for CAD workstations.

I could resort to swappable carriages, but would prefer not to, I'm even considering fooling the BIOS into thinking one drive or another is not there on start up. This means cutting the power or a critical line to the unwanted drive, but what a palaver. It's a pity that A Meggatrends and others can't give a choice on start up.

[Saab Dastard]

Way back in early W98 days, I used to call on whichever drive I wanted during start up. It had the unanticipated and extraordinary characteristic of allowing one to see into the dead drive. So, it wasn't as dead as the setup seemed to imply. Furthermore, one could write files to that second drive.

Interesting, I think I know what you mean, I have a system that used to have a little quirk, namely that the primary hard disk would sometimes fail to spin up in time to be recognised by the BIOS, so the secondary disk would become the boot disk (as it had, in fact, a complete Win 98 installation).

So in fact I had (sometimes and unpredictably) the ability to boot into Win98SE even though the primary disk was Win2K - however, the WIN2K disk remained off-line until the PC was rebooted (and would have been invisible to WIN98 anyway, as it was NTFS).

Now I'm not saying you are wrong, but I have never heard of any BIOS on a PC that would allow a choice of disk to be marked active at boot time! Yes, the boot order can prioritise FDD, CD, HDD and network, but I've never seen a boot order with primary and secondary HDD options.

I am aware that it is straightforward to mark a disk as disabled / not present in the BIOS, allowing you to select the disk to boot from, but that means it would not be possible to access that disk until the BIOS was reset - by definition re-booting the PC.

The best you can get would be to boot disk 1 and be able to access disk 2 in that session, or just have disk 2 available.

SD

[Mac the Knife]

Urrr... Saab, I've got at least 2 mobos where pressing F-whatzit at the POST allows you to boot from the first, second or whateverit-th physical hard drives.

Obviously the drive in question has to have an active partition.

Don't personally use it normally (too clumsy), but I know its there.

:ok:

[jimtherev]

Yes, all motherboards reserve the right to be different! However, the last three I’ve used have a section in the MoBo boot menu (all, in my case, hit by hitting <Esc> during first boot.)

This particular board, yes, there is an option to decide boot primacy, (Floppy, HD, CD, even LAN on this one: don’t know how that works!) But there is another option to select primacy of HDD: HDD1 or HDD2. So on one HD I have XP, on the other Vista – which is sorta what you are trying to do, I guess. Works a treat; each HD can see both C & D (tho’ of course they appear reversed from one disk to t’other)

Browse through the boot menus anyway: you can’t lose anything (unless you tell it to install a password and promptly forget it: that can be fun ;))

[Saab Dastard]

I've got at least 2 mobos where pressing F-whatzit at the POST allows you to boot from the first, second or whateverit-th physical hard drives.

I stand corrected!

there is another option to select primacy of HDD: HDD1 or HDD2

Yes, I got that wrong - the first PC with 2 IDE disks I looked at is an old Compaq with a 1999 BIOS. No possibility of re-ordering the Boot drive. The next PC I checked has a 2006 BIOS but only had one disk (duh!).

But this PC has a 2001 BIOS and I can enter the BIOS and select which drive will be examined for an active boot partition.

I haven't got one where the boot disk can be selected without configuring the BIOS, but I have no doubt that Mac is correct.

:O:O:O:O

SD

[Shunter]

I want the drives to have total and utter autonomy.In that case, you want to Virtualise. That's precisely what Virtualisation is there to do. Get yourself a copy of VMware Server. It's free. Or VirtualBox. That's free aswell. MS have a virtualisation product too, but last time I tried it I was in pain for days afterwards after falling off my chair laughing at its unbelievable crapness.

[Loose rivets]

Could I have been that blind?

I’ve used have a section in the MoBo boot menu (all, in my case, hit by hitting <Esc> during first boot.)

I'd gone into the set-up time and again, no way there, but Esc?

Well, yes...the message was well into the subliminal range. Esc. What did we do in the old days? Ah, yes, Pause. The pristine button pressed for the first time, having allowed the Post messages to be displayed during start.

A hurried physical re-installation of the old drive and sure enough, there were the drives listed on the DOS-like screen. Selected the old Samsung.

The system detected the new drive...didn't want that, so back to F1 and stop Plug and Play for a while. Off again. Sure enough the old computer was back...but the drive order was chaotic. However, it was seeable, and data could be copied. Furthermore, the drive would be kept up to date and returned to its prime status if anything went wrong. Okay, first test workable-ish.

Now the new much faster drive. Booted in a tenth the time even though it's getting fairly burdened with stuff. Proves the need to purify the old drive with a re-installation perhaps.

This time the three logical drives are in order -- don't know why, but Pheeew! (Maybe it's because I changed them within Storage Disc Management some time ago.) Then the DVD and CD then the old drive and its Restore partition then the (largely unwanted ) card readers. Perfect!

So, the new disc is in logical order and when it's the old disc's turn - scattered, but usable. Now, do I dare strip the old and try to force the disc order where I want it? Some other time.

Not having the Barracuda strapped agains the front grill is showing temp change from 37 to 45 c So, need to get going on a proper installation sharpish.