Re: boot.ini and msconfig can't find 2nd boot partition ?

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What you say might be right for your BIOS, but for my BIOS (a Dell
branded BIOS by Phoenix Technologies) the HARD DRIVE boot
order determines the meaning of "rdisk". Notice that I never wrote
just "boot order" - which refers to DEVICE boot order, i.e. what
TYPES of devices boot first. Rather, I consistently used the term
"hard drive boot order" - which prioritizes just the hard drives for
purposes of MBR selection at boot time. In the DEFAULT case,
the hard drive boot order is:
Master, IDE ch. 0,
Slave, IDE ch. 0,
Master, IDE ch. 1,
Slave, IDE chl.1.

If there is not a hard drive in one of those slots, the slot is skipped
for purposes of hard drive priority. In the default case, "rdisk(0)"
refers to the 1st HD in the list, "rdisk(1)" refers to the 2nd HD in the
list, etc.

But if the hard drive boot order is manually changed in the BIOS by
the user (via keyboard input), the meaning of "rdisk(x)" changes, too.
The "x" will refer to the HD's slot in the new hard drive boot order.
I've spent an entire week checking this out with 3 HDs on my own
machine, and there was no variance whatsoever from that scheme.

If you choose to check out whether your own BIOS works that way,
be sure which boot.ini file you're using when booting your system.
You can identify the boot.ini file that the on-screen menu comes
from by putting the name of the HD and the partition that the boot.ini
file is in into the character string of the entries of the boot.ini file's
boot menu. Then, when the boot menu is displayed on the screen,
you will know which partition is supplying the boot menu. This can
all be set up by the still-running the "parent" OS immediately after
making a clone.

Also, if you experiment with more than one partition on each HD,
be sure which partition is marked "active". It will be the Primary
partition that is marked "active" on a HD that will provide the boot
files for the boot process. In the case of multiple HDs, each with
multiple bootable clones, the boot.ini file and it's identity can be a
real puzzle, and it's too bad that Microsoft has been so vague on
the meaning of "rdisk". All that Microsoft's documentation says is
that "rdisk" refers to the position of the hard drive on the controller
or "adapter". But clearly, that definition begs the question.

*TimDaniels*


"John John" wrote:
I don't think that is correct Tim. Changing the boot order in the BIOS does not change the Arc Path of the devices and the second (Slave) hard disc on the secondary IDE channel is rdisk(3).

John

Timothy Daniels wrote:

Your boot.ini for the configuration of HDs that you have is correct.
That is, if the BIOS's *hard drive* boot order is "HD1, HD2, HD3",
the "rdisk" parameter in the boot.ini entry should be "2", as you
have it. Have you checked in the BIOS that the hard drive boot
order is, indeed, "HD1, HD2, HD3"? Your current controler/channel
connections would produce the order "HD1, HD2, HD3" only in the
default mode. If you used Ghost to do the cloning, did you tell it to
copy the MBR as well? Is HD3's partition #1 a Primary partition?
(If it is a "Logical Drive" in an Extended partition, it will be numbered
*after* the Primary partitions have been numbered, and it will be
partition #2.)

When you get this sorted out, and after the shift of HD3 to the 2nd
position in the hard drive boot order, i.e. "HD1, HD3", HD3 will be
referenced with the parameter "rdisk(1)" in the boot.ini file
*TimDaniels*

"Saran" wrote:

Hi, I'm just installed a new hard drive, on the secondary IDE controller, as a slave to my DVD DRIVE.

So I now have a total of 3 HDs.

I've used partition magic to clone my first HD and second HD (both of which had just one partition on each) onto the new drive. I then trimmed out all the unneeded fat from the cloned cloned C: partition which is now on the new (3rd) hd, because I want to use it as a BACKUP boot partition, where I can copy the windows folder to from time to time and if something ever happens to the real C: (first HD) I can boot from the other one and restore the core system stuff or a whole backup if need be.

The problem I seem to be having is configuring my boot.ini

It seems anything I do, the checker in msconfig always barfs on the 2nd entry I make to boot.ini


[boot loader]
timeout=5
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Win XP Pro (Main)"
/fastdetect /NoExecute=OptIn
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(2)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Win XP Pro (Backup)"
/fastdetect /NoExecute=OptIn


I've tried makign the backup entry

multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(3)partition(1)

multi(0)disk(1)rdisk(1)partition(1)

multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(2)partition(1)

to no avail.

Basically my ssytem is like this:


HD 1 (Primary, Master) - P 1: "Drive C:" --> "(Main)"
HD 2 (Primary, Slave) - (wiped, used to be "Drive D:")
DVD (Secondary, Master) - (DVD RW)
HD 3 (Secondary, Slave) - P 1: "Drive I:" --> "(Backup)"
P 2: "Drive D:"

I: was cloned from C: and resized to a minimal size after throwing out anything not needed from it.
D: take up the rest of the space on this new, big (third) hd.


It seems every article I come across explains the meaning of multi, disk, rdisk, and such differently and I can't seem to find the right way to do it so msconfig doesn't barf.

ALSO, I will soon be removing "HD 2" and will put "HD 3" (the new one) in "HD 2"'s spot.

So I'd appreciate the corect configuration of both spots.


(((Is there no way to get a list of how the system seems the drives in the same format as boot.ini uses? That would of made things much easier I think.)))

Thanks for any help.


.

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