How to mark partition as active

  • Thread starter Thread starter Juan Tu No
  • Start date Start date
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Juan Tu No

After adding a second hard drive, the Computer Management > Disk Management
option to "Mark Partition as Active" is grayed out for both drives. And the
second drive is now the active drive. I need to know how to change this so
when I format the new (second) drive as NTFS, I won't have to worry about
boot failure. Thank You in advance.
 
The usual, or old, procedure was to boot with a real-mode DOS floppy and run
FDISK to set an Active Partition. Don't know about an NTFS drive or
partition though.
 
Juan Tu No said:
After adding a second hard drive,
the Computer Management > Disk Management
option to "Mark Partition as Active" is grayed out for both drives.
And the second drive is now the active drive. I need to know
how to change this so when I format the new (second) drive as
NTFS, I won't have to worry about boot failure.
Click to expand...

It sounds like you have only one partition on each hard drive.
Since "active" means "with boot sector", it's not much use
to mark the only partition the "active" one. As for entire hard
drives, there is no "active" marking that has any meaning in
the boot procedure. Here's how it goes:

The BIOS will look down the boot order list to find a HD that
has a Master Boot Record (MBR). If it finds a HD with an MBR,
the MBR code looks for the "active" primary partition on the HD.
Control then passes to the boot sector in that partition. Ntldr in
that partition is given control, and ntlder, acting as a mulit-boot
manager, sets up a boot menu using the boot.ini file. The
selected entry in the menu designates a particular partition on
a particular HD from which ntldr will load the OS. As you can
see, "active" selects the boot sector of a particular partition on
a designated HD. It doesn't select a HD.

~TimDan~
 
Juan Tu No said:
After adding a second hard drive,
the Computer Management > Disk Management
option to "Mark Partition as Active" is grayed out for both drives.
And the second drive is now the active drive. I need to know
how to change this so when I format the new (second) drive as
NTFS, I won't have to worry about boot failure.
Click to expand...

Best way is to disconnect the old drive, make sure the new one is set to Master
(if IDE), re-partition, format and install the OS. Then make sure the old drive
is set to Slave (or Master on secondary IDE channel), reconnect, restart.

A few years ago I had problems after replacing an old HD with a new one, because
of the "active partition" issue. After the new HD was working, I temporarily
copied all the data from the old (smaller) HD to the new one, did a complete
repartition and reformat of the old one, then moved the data back. No more
problems.
 
Timothy said:
It sounds like you have only one partition on each hard drive.
Since "active" means "with boot sector", it's not much use
to mark the only partition the "active" one. As for entire hard
drives, there is no "active" marking that has any meaning in
the boot procedure. Here's how it goes:

The BIOS will look down the boot order list to find a HD that
has a Master Boot Record (MBR). If it finds a HD with an MBR,
the MBR code looks for the "active" primary partition on the HD.
Control then passes to the boot sector in that partition. Ntldr in
that partition is given control, and ntlder, acting as a mulit-boot
manager, sets up a boot menu using the boot.ini file. The
selected entry in the menu designates a particular partition on
a particular HD from which ntldr will load the OS. As you can
see, "active" selects the boot sector of a particular partition on
a designated HD. It doesn't select a HD.

~TimDan~
Click to expand...

Kudos for a great explanation of something that has frequently confused me!

Does this also apply to SCSI drives?

I have a SCSI test system with several operating systems installed, each
on a separate disk. Some disks have more than one partition, but the OS
is installed on the first partition in all cases. No partitions are
"active", but I can boot any OS by setting the boot SCSI ID
appropriately on the SCSI controller.

I know I've booted this system from partitions other than the first on a
disk previously, but I don't recall if that required making the
partition "active" first - it would, right?

Sunny
 
Sunny said:
Does this also apply to SCSI drives?

I have a SCSI test system with several operating systems installed,
each on a separate disk. Some disks have more than one partition,
but the OS is installed on the first partition in all cases. No partitions
are "active", but I can boot any OS by setting the boot SCSI ID
appropriately on the SCSI controller.

I know I've booted this system from partitions other than the first on a
disk previously, but I don't recall if that required making the
partition "active" first - it would, right?
Click to expand...


I know very little about SCSI disks, but all the boot procedure
descriptions I've read relating to Windows leaves most of SCSI
awareness down at the level of the BIOS. All that I could find that
mentions "SCSI" in the boot process is this discussion in the
Microsoft knowledge base about fixing a broken boot.ini file:

"Create a Boot.ini file on the floppy disk that you formatted in
step 1. You can also copy the file from another computer that
is running Windows and then modify it to match the computer
that you are creating the startup disk for. The following example
works for a single-partition SCSI drive with Windows 2000
Advanced Server installed in the Winnt folder, but the exact
value in the [operating systems] section depends on the
configuration of the Windows-based computer that you are
creating the startup disk for:

[boot loader]
timeout=30
Default= scsi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\Winnt
[operating systems]
scsi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT="Microsoft Windows
2000 Advanced Server" /fastdetect

If your computer starts from an IDE, EIDE, or ESDI hard disk,
replace scsi(0) with multi(0). If you are using a computer that
is running Windows NT 3.5 or Windows NT 3.51 and your
computer starts from the first or second SCSI drive, then you
can also replace scsi(0) with multi(0). For example:

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

If you are using scsi(x) in the Boot.ini file, copy the correct
device driver for the SCSI controller that is in use on the
computer, and then rename it Ntbootdd.sys. If you are using
multi(x) in the Boot.ini file, you do not have to do this."



Notice that there is no connection between "scsi" and the
concept of active partitions. Remember that the "active"
partition is just the partition that contains a boot sector
and the ntldr and boot.ini files. Once ntldr uses boot.ini
to provide the boot menu, the OSes listed in that menu and
the one chosen to load may be anywhere on any hard drive.
That means that the OS doesn't have to be on the "active"
partition of the boot HD, it just has to be where the selected
menu entry says it is. IOW, the "active" partition and the
partition containing the OS needn't be the same partition.
And my educated guess is that all this applies equally and
in the same way to both IDE and SCSI hard drives. But
in the interest of keeping us all educated, please post your
own findings here.

*TimDaniels*
 
If you are using scsi(x) in the Boot.ini file, copy the correct
device driver for the SCSI controller that is in use on the
computer, and then rename it Ntbootdd.sys. If you are using
multi(x) in the Boot.ini file, you do not have to do this."
Click to expand...

Interesting.

I have a test system with NT4, W2K Pro, and XP Pro (among other OSes)
each installed on separate SCSI disks in an external drive enclosure.

I checked, none of them are using scsi(x) in boot.ini - matter of fact I
don't recall *ever* seeing scsi(x) in a boot.ini, however my memories of
NT3.51 have faded...
Notice that there is no connection between "scsi" and the
concept of active partitions. Remember that the "active"
partition is just the partition that contains a boot sector
and the ntldr and boot.ini files. Once ntldr uses boot.ini
Click to expand...

I don't have *any* active partitions according to Partition Magic - in
fact it keeps warning me my system won't boot as a result. I assume this
means none of my partitions have a boot sector either - but my bootable
partitions all contain ntldr and a valid boot.ini
to provide the boot menu, the OSes listed in that menu and
the one chosen to load may be anywhere on any hard drive.
That means that the OS doesn't have to be on the "active"
partition of the boot HD, it just has to be where the selected
menu entry says it is. IOW, the "active" partition and the
partition containing the OS needn't be the same partition.
And my educated guess is that all this applies equally and
in the same way to both IDE and SCSI hard drives. But
in the interest of keeping us all educated, please post your
own findings here.
Click to expand...

Apparently all this doesn't *quite* apply equally to IDE and SCSI, since
SCSI doesn't appear to require a boot sector.

Motherboard IDE BIOSes typically don't allow you to specify the boot
disk, so I suppose they search for a boot sector. SCSI controller
BIOSes, OTOH, typically *require* you to specify the boot disk, so I
suppose they simply attempt to boot from the specified disk regardless
of the presence of a boot sector.

If that's the case, what is required to boot Windows installed on a
partition *other* than the first partition on a SCSI disk?

Do ntldr and boot.ini have to reside on the first partition, or on the
boot partition? Or either? And if they reside only on the boot
partition, does that partition then require a boot sector?

I expect I'll be able to answer those questions - just need to decide
which of my test system disks is expendable, and make time to experiment ;-)

Sunny
 
Sunny said:
I have a test system with NT4, W2K Pro, and XP Pro
(among other OSes) each installed on separate SCSI
disks in an external drive enclosure.

I checked, none of them are using scsi(x) in boot.ini -
matter of fact I don't recall *ever* seeing scsi(x) in a
boot.ini, however my memories of NT3.51 have faded...


I don't have *any* active partitions according to Partition Magic -
in fact it keeps warning me my system won't boot as a result.
I assume this means none of my partitions have a boot sector
either - but my bootable partitions all contain ntldr and a valid
boot.ini
Click to expand...


By using Disk Management in WinXP, I see that the HD that
has one bootable partition is shown with no "(active)" notation,
and right-clicking on it shows the "Mark Partition as Active"
as grayed out. The HD with multiple bootable partitions on it,
though, has one partition marked "(active)". It seems that Disk
Management may look for that flag only if there are multiple
partitions on a HD. IOW, the flag might be there even if utilities
don't report it.

*TimDaniels*
 
klaus2 said:
I have plugged my notebook's hd to my desktop in order to copy some
files. I used to do this with XP with no problems.

However, now, with VISTA, after putting the hardisk back to my laptop
it won't boot! I does not even detect it on the setup. But it is easily
detected using XP cd.
Click to expand...

What do you mean? The BIOS "setup" does not detect it? If so, it's most
likely a hardware issue.

Vista must have changed the system/bootable flag, no?! How can I change
it back? It still says active and primary thought.
Click to expand...

"Active" means the boot flag is already set.
 
inline below

klaus2 said:
Thanks for all the help guys, getting desperate here. Thanks Bill
Blanton.

When I boot up it hangs for some seconds and then says the classic "no
disk".
Click to expand...

That's probably a BIOS message. The BIOS can't load the first sector, or
the ending sector signature is missing. Fixboot should have taken care
of the latter.

Hard Disk is the original, nothing changed, used to work fine. I
removed it, used it on a USB-IDE box on my NEW Vista desktop and puff,
never booted anylonger. I used to do this on XP with no problems.
Click to expand...

I don't think Vista has anything to do with it. You didn't convert it, did you?
Or let something like Goback take it into its config?

Vista had problems accessing the mydocuments folder and I had to ser
permissions to access all files.

I know there's that issue, that when you have two bootable windows
disks one is flagged as the most important and then the other does not
boot anymore?!
Click to expand...

The BIOS controls which loads. Is the disk set as the boot disk in the BIOS?
Also check that it is reporting the correct disk size.

One thing I find strange: THE LED from the disk now it's always on! On
the USB-ide box AND on the portable! ?!? Could it mean anything?
Click to expand...

Could be hung up trying to read.

Also, could this be a bad cluster on the boot? Wouldn't BOOTCFG
/REBUILD have been given me a warn if that was the case?
Click to expand...


It doesn't sound like you're getting to the point where clusters have any
meaning. Check that the jumper is properly seated. Take a close look at
the pins in the socket. Look for bent/damaged pins. Reseat the plug.
 
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