Re: 2 drives needed to boot - how to fix

Thank you all for your suggestions!

In answer to the questions asked by Pegasus:

If I can remember correctly, I think I made a clone of my disk using
xxclone. I remember I tried a couple of different ways to clone the entire
hard drive (4 partitions) and had problems doing all 4 at once. I had to do
them one at a time. I just don't remember exactly what I did - it has been
too long.

If I can get the system to boot fro the master (original) disk I can try an
clone things again and then keep the clone updated - any suggestions on doing
this? Is a clone/backup not the best thing to do?

Disk 0 is my primary (master) drive. Disk 1 is the cloned version which I am
using for my backup. So my old disk is my master disk.

I checked out disk managment and found that disk 0 has a partion that says
'system' and another partition that says 'boot'. On disk 1 (the clone) there
is a partion that says 'active'.

When I tried to boot the master disk by itself, it really didn't get very
far. I only saw a black screen that flashed white text with 'NTDetect.......'
error message and then the PC would reboot. I will have to get back to you on
the exact message - I apologize as I realize this would help a lot. I need to
wait for another process to complete before I can reboot ( a backup in case I
make a mess of this).

The boot.ini file says:
[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(3)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(3)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP
Professional" /fastdetect

My hard drive setup is a bit weird in the way it was originally set up, so
partion 3 really is where the OS is located.

What I meant by 2 XP system folders is that if I have a clone of my master
drive then I have 2 system folders. One on disk 0 and another on disk 1.

Thank you so much for your help,
John

"Pegasus" wrote:


"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"?



.

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