Enable Boot from multiple hard drives

e-nation

hello. i would like to have the option to boot from either of two hard drives that i have installed.

seperately, i have installed XP on both drives, and they both work fine independantly.

in the past, i experienced a big pain in the ass data "loss" due to an oversight when i installed PowerQuest's Boot Magic, so i'm hesitant to go that route as a first choice this time. (see this thead for details on that whole disaster). perhaps you have a suggestions for a more "fail safe" dual-boot managing software (seperate hard drive dual boot-abilty, NOT two OS's on the same drive)? maybe that's not technically a dual boot, but i think you know what i'm trying to do here.

currently, i've been restarting, going into the BIOS and configuring boot sequence options such that i am able to boot into the different hard drive OS's that way... it's a bit tedious, but works.... or does it...

that's my question here... am i potentially damaging the hard drives by having them boot like this?

when i initially installed the second drive, in order for them to work together properly, C: must be Master, and D: as slave (cable select results in a non-booting state, or so it seems after some minutes of impatient waiting)
my concern-- even w/ D set as slave, it WILL boot when i chage the BIOS startup/setup settings.

now, this may be unrelated, but i have lately been hearing some rather unpleasant grumblings from the hard drive(s). i'm not sure which is making the noise (IBM and Quantum Fireball)

i apprciate any suggestions, comments, etc.
thanks!

Hawk

I had 2 drives with win xp on them. What you do is have only one drive connected--install xp. After you get it up and running ok, then shut down and plug in the other drive. Boot pc up in first drive with xp on it. Put in xp cd and it will ask what you want to do-- fresh install,-- repair, etc and you choose fresh install and it will show you the drive letter it's going to load on, just change the drive letter to the new drive and it will ask to format it-yes- and you go through setup. Then when pc starts up after installs are finished, it will give you a selection window and you choose which drive you want to boot from. Thats how mine worked. As I understand it (reading other forums) Win 2000 will do this too.
And, No you shouldn't be doing any damage just changing the drive you boot from in the bios. I know people that have done it for quite a while with no harm done. As for the master --slave thing, I've forgotten which way was best. Maybe one of the other guys is more positive on which way they should go.

e-nation

thanks for the reply, hawk! next time i get a new drive (soon hopefullY upgrade from this 40gig!), i'm definitely going to try that!

right now, formatting is not an option i want to go with, as i'm doing quite a bit of audio editing on that second drive (hence my "need" for the 2nd drive... a "bare bones" type system, w/ only audio software on there).

while i'm at it... any suggestions on a good freeware hard drive diagnositc that might be able to determine if the thing is in physical trouble/ about to go down?... damn she sure is moaning at the moment!

i think i have system works 2004 around here somewhere... but not sure if that's got the best diagnostics... thought maybe someone might know of somethin' better for examining the "physical" stability of it.

thanks.

Hawk

Here's a few=
http://www.download.com/-1-TuffTEST-Lite/3000-2086-8596189.html?tag=lst-0-12, http://downloads-zdnet.com.com/Fresh-Diagnose/3000-2086-10289593.html?tag=lst-0-5, http://downloads-zdnet.com.com/Emsa-DiskCheck/3000-2086-10285212.html?tag=lst-0-15, http://downloads-zdnet.com.com/Drive-Fitness-Test/3000-2086-10247422.html?tag=lst-0-12.
I had an old maxtor that would squeel. I bought a pinpoint oiler and put a tiny drop of oil on the spindle and it cleared right up. Be very careful if you decide to do this, it only takes a fine, tiny, little drop on there. The reason I say that is- maybe the spindle oil on bearings has dryed out. I would check disk diagnostics first, then maybe try oiler as last resort.

kryyst

I can't think of what they are called but I've seen them around at most computer shops and at places like tigerdirect. It's a hardware option to do what you want. It's a switch you can hook up to your drives so you litterally can say which one is primary, which one is secondary or even have one of them not viewable.

So if you have drive a and b you could set it so at power on
A is primary B is secondary
B is primary A is secondary
A or B is primary and the other drive isn't even viewable.

Very cool little hardware device.