SATA Boot Order

  • Thread starter Thread starter barrowhill
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barrowhill

Can someone advice the boot order for connected SATA Drives ? Is there a
boot order ? Can it be set?

I ask because I have (or should say had) a XP SATA drive and Windows 7 SATA
drive both connected to SATA 1 and SATA 3 ports on motherboard - test bed
system.

System wouldn't start up, rebooted then options to recover or start normally.

disconnectng XP drive, Windows 7 would not boot (drive letter susepected
changed) and with only XP disk connected, it still wanted to boot windows 7
(I'd like an explanation of this !!!).

Result. Can't boot from either; looks like mbr corrupt on both. Tried to
fix XP mbr/boot sector but never got option to run recovery console. As far
as it was concerned there was no windows installation on disk???
 
barrowhill said:
Can someone advice the boot order for connected SATA Drives ? Is there a
boot order ? Can it be set?

I ask because I have (or should say had) a XP SATA drive and Windows 7 SATA
drive both connected to SATA 1 and SATA 3 ports on motherboard - test bed
system.

System wouldn't start up, rebooted then options to recover or start normally.

disconnectng XP drive, Windows 7 would not boot (drive letter susepected
changed) and with only XP disk connected, it still wanted to boot windows 7
(I'd like an explanation of this !!!).

Result. Can't boot from either; looks like mbr corrupt on both. Tried to
fix XP mbr/boot sector but never got option to run recovery console. As far
as it was concerned there was no windows installation on disk???
Click to expand...

If your intention is to have two OSes, and have them managed by one
boot manager, then you can leave both drives connected during the
installation of the OSes. However, whatever the OS installer does
to your disks, will only be perfectly consistent if both disks
and both OSes remain present.

If you want to prevent the OS installers, from screwing up the
boot information on other drives, disconnect those drives,
*before* you install the second OS.

Whether I'm installing Linux, or installing Windows, I've learned
the hard way, that *only* the target hard drive should be connected
during the initial install. After the OS is bootable, you can connect
the other drives, install drivers or whatever.

Now, your problem is, even though you have two drives, the installation
is set up, such that the booting of both drives, is vectored through
the boot management on one of the drives. You'll need to figure out
how the boot management works on each drive, and how restoration
of booting works on each disk, in order to correct the problem.

You have the right idea, in seeking to find a Recovery Console,
in order to experiment with the fixmbr or fixboot commands. My
guess is, all you'd need is fixmbr, but I could be wrong. On
WinXP, there is also boot.ini, which you can examine with a text
editor.

I found a bootable Recovery Console here, but I don't know where
this came from originally. I haven't tested this yet. A quick
look with 7ZIP, shows it has an i386 folder with 222 files in it.
(The first level of the ZIP is xp_rec_con.iso and you use a
program like Nero, to convert that into a bootable CD. Don't just
"copy" the file to a CD.)

http://web.archive.org/*/http://www.webtree.ca/windowsxp/Tools/bootdiscs/xp_rec_con.zip

Paul
 
barrowhill said:
Can someone advice the boot order for connected SATA Drives ? Is there a
boot order ? Can it be set?

I ask because I have (or should say had) a XP SATA drive and Windows 7 SATA
drive both connected to SATA 1 and SATA 3 ports on motherboard - test bed
system.

System wouldn't start up, rebooted then options to recover or start normally.

disconnectng XP drive, Windows 7 would not boot (drive letter susepected
changed) and with only XP disk connected, it still wanted to boot windows 7
(I'd like an explanation of this !!!).

Result. Can't boot from either; looks like mbr corrupt on both. Tried to
fix XP mbr/boot sector but never got option to run recovery console. As far
as it was concerned there was no windows installation on disk???
Click to expand...

(Reposted - used wrong server to reach Microsoft...)

If your intention is to have two OSes, and have them managed by one
boot manager, then you can leave both drives connected during the
installation of the OSes. However, whatever the OS installer does
to your disks, will only be perfectly consistent if both disks
and both OSes remain present.

If you want to prevent the OS installers, from screwing up the
boot information on other drives, disconnect those drives,
*before* you install the second OS.

Whether I'm installing Linux, or installing Windows, I've learned
the hard way, that *only* the target hard drive should be connected
during the initial install. After the OS is bootable, you can connect
the other drives, install drivers or whatever.

Now, your problem is, even though you have two drives, the installation
is set up, such that the booting of both drives, is vectored through
the boot management on one of the drives. You'll need to figure out
how the boot management works on each drive, and how restoration
of booting works on each disk, in order to correct the problem.

You have the right idea, in seeking to find a Recovery Console,
in order to experiment with the fixmbr or fixboot commands. My
guess is, all you'd need is fixmbr, but I could be wrong. On
WinXP, there is also boot.ini, which you can examine with a text
editor.

I found a bootable Recovery Console here, but I don't know where
this came from originally. I haven't tested this yet. A quick
look with 7ZIP, shows it has an i386 folder with 222 files in it.
(The first level of the ZIP is xp_rec_con.iso and you use a
program like Nero, to convert that into a bootable CD. Don't just
"copy" the file to a CD.)

http://web.archive.org/*/http://www.webtree.ca/windowsxp/Tools/bootdiscs/xp_rec_con.zip

Paul
 
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