New build - Active partition query

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rbelNews

New PC build, new SATA drive with Win XP Home SP2.

Just added an IDE drive from an older PC and Disk Management is showing
as disk 0 and the first partition of this as a logical drive and
*active* (there is no system or data on it).

The SATA drive with the system loaded is now shown as disk 1 (was disk
0) and the C partition as healthy (system).

This system is booting OK, although pausing for confirmation of the IDE
disk for some reason, but I would have thought the C partition on the
SATA drive should be the active one but I cannot find a way of
'inactivating' the current active partition.

Grateful for any advice.
 
rbelNews said:
New PC build, new SATA drive with Win XP Home SP2.

Just added an IDE drive from an older PC and Disk Management is showing
as disk 0 and the first partition of this as a logical drive and
*active* (there is no system or data on it).

The SATA drive with the system loaded is now shown as disk 1 (was disk
0) and the C partition as healthy (system).

This system is booting OK, although pausing for confirmation of the IDE
disk for some reason, but I would have thought the C partition on the
SATA drive should be the active one but I cannot find a way of
'inactivating' the current active partition.

Grateful for any advice.
Click to expand...

Hi,
What happen if you Right click " My Computer" and select Manage.
On The Computer Management expand the Storage and select " Disk Management".
On there Make sure the C:\Partition selected and click on the Setting icon
on the Toolbar at the top, there you will see two tabs:

Appearance | Scaling

Click on Appearance and change the settings to be Primary partition.
The same with the Other IDE and you can assign a Drive Letter for it and set
it to Secondary Partition.
HTH.
nass
 
nass said:
Hi,
What happen if you Right click " My Computer" and select Manage.
On The Computer Management expand the Storage and select " Disk Management".
On there Make sure the C:\Partition selected and click on the Setting icon
on the Toolbar at the top, there you will see two tabs:

Appearance | Scaling

Click on Appearance and change the settings to be Primary partition.
The same with the Other IDE and you can assign a Drive Letter for it and set
it to Secondary Partition.
HTH.
nass
Click to expand...


The C partition on the SATA drive is already indicating (dark blue) that
it is a primary partition.

Will setting the first partition on the IDE drive to secondary change
the active property?
 
rbel said:
The C partition on the SATA drive is already indicating (dark blue) that
it is a primary partition.

Will setting the first partition on the IDE drive to secondary change
the active property?
Click to expand...

Try the BIOS and set tje second IDE as Salve, also check the Jumper of the
second IDE is set to Slave, by the looks both set to Cable select.
If I correct SATA has an utility that can help in setting the partition table
HTH.
nass
 
Each and every disk can be assigned one active partition and most of the
time each and every disk does have an active partition. If you have
three hard disks in your computer you can have three active partitions
and that doesn't make any difference whatsoever to the operating system,
the active partition on which the operating system booted from will be
labeled as the System partition and the other active partitions will
simply be shown as active.

John
 
rbelNews said:
New PC build, new SATA drive with Win XP Home SP2.

Just added an IDE drive from an older PC and Disk Management is showing as
disk 0 and the first partition of this as a logical drive and *active*
(there is no system or data on it).

The SATA drive with the system loaded is now shown as disk 1 (was disk 0)
and the C partition as healthy (system).

This system is booting OK, although pausing for confirmation of the IDE
disk for some reason, but I would have thought the C partition on the SATA
drive should be the active one but I cannot find a way of 'inactivating'
the current active partition.

Grateful for any advice.
Click to expand...


rbel:
Since you don't indicate otherwise, I'm assuming you're not experiencing any
significant problem here other than some slight pause during bootup re the
system recognizing the PATA (IDE) HDD.

It's perfectly normal in your configuration that the system (Disk
Management) would be reflecting your boot drive, the SATA HDD as
"Healthy(System)" and your secondary HDD as "Healthy(Active)".

It's possible the Disk 0 - 1 reversals are due to the boot priority order in
your motherboard's BIOS. Possibly that setting indicates the PATA HDD
occupies a higher order of priority than the SATA (or SCSI) HDD. The system
will still (usually) default to the bootable SATA HDD under those
circumstances when it finds the PATA HDD to be an unbootable device - I'm
assuming, of course, that your PATA HDD is not bootable. Actually, I'm not
really sure whether that accounts for the Disk 0 -1 reversals in your
situation, but you might want to check out your boot priority (and any
related) BIOS settings.
Anna
 
Anna said:
rbel:
Since you don't indicate otherwise, I'm assuming you're not experiencing any
significant problem here other than some slight pause during bootup re the
system recognizing the PATA (IDE) HDD.

It's perfectly normal in your configuration that the system (Disk
Management) would be reflecting your boot drive, the SATA HDD as
"Healthy(System)" and your secondary HDD as "Healthy(Active)".

It's possible the Disk 0 - 1 reversals are due to the boot priority order in
your motherboard's BIOS. Possibly that setting indicates the PATA HDD
occupies a higher order of priority than the SATA (or SCSI) HDD. The system
will still (usually) default to the bootable SATA HDD under those
circumstances when it finds the PATA HDD to be an unbootable device - I'm
assuming, of course, that your PATA HDD is not bootable. Actually, I'm not
really sure whether that accounts for the Disk 0 -1 reversals in your
situation, but you might want to check out your boot priority (and any
related) BIOS settings.
Click to expand...

Anna

No problems effecting the use. Initially I just wondered why the disk
numbers had changed and then noticed the Active notation for the first
PATA drive partition. The first guidance I read on active state
indicated that there should only be one active partition on a *computer*
and that it should be on the boot disk - I can now see that this was
just poor wording.

The BIOS settings are:
Boot sequence - no PATA drive listed
HDDs - PATA drive listed as 2nd drive.

I can only assume that it is the presence of the active setting on the
PATA drive that has caused the disk numbering to change.
 
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