Re: 2 drives needed to boot - how to fix


"John66" <John66@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:575E0461-15FD-448A-8827-4D78809F7481@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
I'm running XP pro and things seem to be fine. I thought I was being
'smart'
by adding a second hard drive to my system as a backup. I cloned my
primary
hard drive and have dutifully backed up changes to the cloned drive
thinkng
that should my primary drive fail I would be prepared with an up-to-date
hard
drive I could immediately use.

Obviously I don't know what I'm doing because I just happened to
disconnect
my cloned drive and my system won't boot. After some trial and error, it
seems my system wants both hard drives to be able to boot.

Any suggestions on how to repair my master drive so it will boot by
itself?
Am I having issues because there are 2 XP system folders that could be
found?
I did notice an error message of sorts flash by that said something about
NTDetect - but thats all I see before it reboots itself.

If you have any suggestions on the best approach to backing up data and
well
as the entire system --- I am all ears.

Thanks,
John

Some questions:
- How exactly did you clone the system partition?
- Which is your primary master disk - the old or the new disk?
- Is the system partition on the old disk still marked "active"?
- How far does the boot process go when booting with a single disk?
- What message do you seen when the boot process stalls? Press
the "Pause" key to freeze the boot process, and Enter to unfreeze it.
- What is the contents of the hidden file c:\boot.ini?
- What exactly do you mean with "2 XP system folders"?


.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Clone, ghost, migrate or image?
    ... operated temporarily in an external enclosure, then swap the drives. ... Windows install hard disk with the machine, ... all practical purposes your new HDD will be a duplicate of your current HDD. ... enclosure specifically designed for 2 1/2" hard drives. ...
    (microsoft.public.windowsxp.help_and_support)
  • Re: Advice needed, hard drive 0 is failing on a RAID1 SBS2003 server, any tips welcome because Ive n
    ... So far no more disk error events either. ... I will be able to get on site at a convenient time for the customer within a week and restart the server and go into the BIOS and see the state of the disks. ... > Pair of Maxtor PATA hard drives in RAID1. ...
    (microsoft.public.windows.server.sbs)
  • Re: 2 drives needed to boot - how to fix
    ... seems my system wants both hard drives to be able to boot. ... Which is your primary master disk - the old or the new disk? ...
    (microsoft.public.windowsxp.general)
  • Re: 2 drives needed to boot - how to fix
    ... seems my system wants both hard drives to be able to boot. ... Which is your primary master disk - the old or the new disk? ...
    (microsoft.public.windowsxp.general)
  • Re: ghosting
    ... that Ghost 2003's DOS utility GHOST.EXE could not read/write to a NTFS partition. ... If you are using a larger hard disk, it makes NO sense to downgrade to a smaller hard disk. ... It makes no difference in the size of your hard drives as long ...
    (microsoft.public.windowsxp.general)