Boot drive problem

  • Thread starter Thread starter Ron Funkhouser
  • Start date Start date
R

Ron Funkhouser

I have a hard drive which I need to retrieve data from. It has a windows
directory on it but one of the files is corrupt. The drive is NTFS
formatted by WinXP

I set up a new MB with a raid array. When I put this old hard drive in,
WinXP always boots from it and not from my raid array. I have put it in as
master and slave and on both channels of the IDE and it always boots from
this disk and not the raid array.

I took ot to my friend, who has a Win2000 system and a SCSI array. The same
thing happened; it always booted from this disk and not from the SCSI array.

Can anyone help??

Thanks,

Ron
 
Ron,

Don't take me wrong here but geez RTFM! Surprisingly enough there is an
order to how computers operate based on settings in the BIOS. When the CMOS
(the user interface for the BIOS) is left at defaults it will tend to have
an order for booting HDs.

It will usually look first at the "A" drive (floppy) then through the IDE
controlers HDs (Primary IDE, Drive 0, Secondary IDE Drive 0, Primary IDE
Drive 1, etc.) an possibly to a CDROM. Most default BIOS settings allow for
searching the system for other bootable devices IF THERE IS NO BOOTABLE
DEVICE FOUND on the Primary/Secondary IDE controlers.

Once you put a bootable device on either controler the system will look to
it as the boot device! You have to go into your systems CMOS and manually
tell it where you want it to search for boot files and in what order. On
most boards there will be a SCSI option or simular to boot from drives NOT
attached to one of the IDE controlers. This should be noted in your MBs
owner's manual.

The fact that the behavior was the same on your friends system may simply
mean that he is also using "default" settings on his system. If he had no
other bootable drives on Primary/Secondary until you introduced your drive
than the result would be the same.

FWIW,
Len
 
Len:

I want to thank you. I went back and reread my MB owners manual. All it
give is a list of options, no explanations, for what to set the boot drive
at. So I set it for SCSI, who would know you would set an IDE array as a
SCSI, and it worked very well. I have this drive on as an additional drive
now.

So thanks very much. . . one more thing to add to my list of things to know.

Ron
 
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