Same Vista on 2 different drives

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Guest

When I installed Vista I mistakenly put it on my backup drive instead of my
main drive. Now I have it on both drives and I get a boot choice of two
Vistas after the POST. I wish to use only one drive for the OS. So I tried
disconnecting the backup and the computer would not boot at all. If I hook
up the disc drives in their same order i can boot to to either on as before.
I have done some research and have learned of the boot.bak and other boot
files located in the main drive letters. I am hesitant to act on any of the
directions i have read as they were all related to a vista-xp dual boot
situation. Does anybody have an idea of how i can get the OS off of my
backup drive and safely use my main drive. Thanks for your help!
 
Mike,

With both drives connected, boot to the main drive, which should be the C
drive. Then, right click Computer (formerly My Computer) and select Manage
and then select Disk Manager. In Disk Manager, you should be able to format
the backup drive with the extra copy of Vista on it. Do I understand the
problem? Post back on the results.
 
Mike said:
When I installed Vista I mistakenly put it on my backup drive instead of
my
main drive. Now I have it on both drives and I get a boot choice of two
Vistas after the POST. I wish to use only one drive for the OS. So I
tried
disconnecting the backup and the computer would not boot at all. If I
hook
up the disc drives in their same order i can boot to to either on as
before.
I have done some research and have learned of the boot.bak and other boot
files located in the main drive letters. I am hesitant to act on any of
the
directions i have read as they were all related to a vista-xp dual boot
situation. Does anybody have an idea of how i can get the OS off of my
backup drive and safely use my main drive. Thanks for your help!
Click to expand...

Mike, you installed the boot loader onto your backup drive, that is why it
won't boot up without that drive in place.
 
If i simply format the backup drive will the boot manager recognize that the
drive was removed and let me boot without the vista OS on it? If i
understand captain roberts correctly, then all i need is for those discs to
be attached, weather or not vista is actually on the back up. Is this
correct? thanks -mike
 
Mike,

Here is what you said in your original post " Now I have it on both drives
and I get a boot choice of two
Vistas after the POST."

With that choice, boot to the drive that you want to keep as your Vista boot
drive. Then use Disk Management as indicated in previous post. You don't
need Vista on two drives to boot. Since you're already booted to the drive
you want to keep, why worry about whether you need Vista on the backup drive
to boot. The drive that you are in is, or will become, the C drive.
 
Wow, catastrophic results. I formatted the backup and now i get a bootmgr
error after POST. So i tried the system restore with the install disc and it
would not find the driver (which i have on usb and floppy) for the SATA
controller. So I had an old IDE drive with XP on it and thankfully I was
able to boot XP. Booted XP again with the SATA drives attached and force
booted the XP drive and it recognized the SATAs and i was able to back up all
files to DVD (took forever). Is there a way to reclaim my Vista or do i have
to do another full format and install? Do you know a way to edit the bootmgr
so that i can continue with my version of Vista?
 
Mike said:
Wow, catastrophic results. I formatted the backup and now i get a bootmgr
error after POST.
Click to expand...
-snip-

That is what I thought would happen if you took freddy's advice. When you
install Vista by booting from the DVD whatever drive you install to becomes
the C drive. That is why it is important to know the sizes of each drive
and NOT rely on the naming convention of Vista.

There are several recovery tools in DVD, but if it were me I would do a
clean install of Vista taking note of the drive you are installing to.
Also, make sure you download the Vista version of your SATA drivers to
floppy first.

Captain Roberts
 
Mike,

Too bad it didn't work, but does it matter, since your system wasn't working
they way you wanted anyway? How would the results been any different had you
done something else? Like what? Even so, I agree with the Captain in that a
clean install is a good approach at this time.
 
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