Re: How to mark partition as active
From: Timothy Daniels (TDaniels_at_NoSpamDot.com)
Date: 01/20/05
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Date: Wed, 19 Jan 2005 23:08:33 -0800
"Sunny" wrote:
>
>
> Timothy Daniels wrote:
>
>> "Juan Tu No" wrote:
>>
>>> After adding a second hard drive,
>>> the Computer Management > Disk Management
>>> option to "Mark Partition as Active" is grayed out for both drives.
>>> And the second drive is now the active drive. I need to know
>>> how to change this so when I format the new (second) drive as
>>> NTFS, I won't have to worry about boot failure.
>>
>>
>> It sounds like you have only one partition on each hard drive.
>> Since "active" means "with boot sector", it's not much use
>> to mark the only partition the "active" one. As for entire hard
>> drives, there is no "active" marking that has any meaning in
>> the boot procedure. Here's how it goes:
>>
>> The BIOS will look down the boot order list to find a HD that
>> has a Master Boot Record (MBR). If it finds a HD with an MBR,
>> the MBR code looks for the "active" primary partition on the HD.
>> Control then passes to the boot sector in that partition. Ntldr in
>> that partition is given control, and ntlder, acting as a mulit-boot
>> manager, sets up a boot menu using the boot.ini file. The
>> selected entry in the menu designates a particular partition on
>> a particular HD from which ntldr will load the OS. As you can
>> see, "active" selects the boot sector of a particular partition on
>> a designated HD. It doesn't select a HD.
>
> Does this also apply to SCSI drives?
>
> I have a SCSI test system with several operating systems installed,
> each on a separate disk. Some disks have more than one partition,
> but the OS is installed on the first partition in all cases. No partitions
> are "active", but I can boot any OS by setting the boot SCSI ID
> appropriately on the SCSI controller.
>
> I know I've booted this system from partitions other than the first on a
> disk previously, but I don't recall if that required making the
> partition "active" first - it would, right?
I know very little about SCSI disks, but all the boot procedure
descriptions I've read relating to Windows leaves most of SCSI
awareness down at the level of the BIOS. All that I could find that
mentions "SCSI" in the boot process is this discussion in the
Microsoft knowledge base about fixing a broken boot.ini file:
"Create a Boot.ini file on the floppy disk that you formatted in
step 1. You can also copy the file from another computer that
is running Windows and then modify it to match the computer
that you are creating the startup disk for. The following example
works for a single-partition SCSI drive with Windows 2000
Advanced Server installed in the Winnt folder, but the exact
value in the [operating systems] section depends on the
configuration of the Windows-based computer that you are
creating the startup disk for:
[boot loader]
timeout=30
Default= scsi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\Winnt
[operating systems]
scsi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT="Microsoft Windows
2000 Advanced Server" /fastdetect
If your computer starts from an IDE, EIDE, or ESDI hard disk,
replace scsi(0) with multi(0). If you are using a computer that
is running Windows NT 3.5 or Windows NT 3.51 and your
computer starts from the first or second SCSI drive, then you
can also replace scsi(0) with multi(0). For example:
[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT="Microsoft Windows
2000 Advanced Server" /fastdetect
If you are using scsi(x) in the Boot.ini file, copy the correct
device driver for the SCSI controller that is in use on the
computer, and then rename it Ntbootdd.sys. If you are using
multi(x) in the Boot.ini file, you do not have to do this."
Notice that there is no connection between "scsi" and the
concept of active partitions. Remember that the "active"
partition is just the partition that contains a boot sector
and the ntldr and boot.ini files. Once ntldr uses boot.ini
to provide the boot menu, the OSes listed in that menu and
the one chosen to load may be anywhere on any hard drive.
That means that the OS doesn't have to be on the "active"
partition of the boot HD, it just has to be where the selected
menu entry says it is. IOW, the "active" partition and the
partition containing the OS needn't be the same partition.
And my educated guess is that all this applies equally and
in the same way to both IDE and SCSI hard drives. But
in the interest of keeping us all educated, please post your
own findings here.
*TimDaniels*
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