How to boot Windows XP from the primary slave IDE channel

I have three PCs and a laptop. However, all have Ultra ATA IDE cables
on
the primary channel and old fashioned ATA IDE cables on the secondary
channel. So when my laptop hard drive began having problems, I could
use
my 2.5" IDE to 3.5" IDE converter to plug my laptop hard drive into the
primary IDE channel only because only the primary channels had enough
pins on the ATA IDE cable. I didn't want to move around too many cables
between computers or wait to buy another cable.

Laptop hard drives must be the master IDE device. So I needed a way to
boot Windows from the primary slave drive.

Windows can boot from NEITHER the primary slave NOR the secondary slave
without using a boot loader like GRUB.

After hours of searching the Internet, I planned:
1. to create a GRUB boot floppy
2. to change the jumpers to move my working, existing Windows desktop
hard drive to the primary slave, temporarily disconnecting
my primary slave operating Linux
3. to plug in the laptop hard drive using the 2.5" IDE to 3.5" IDE
converter as the primary master

As root, I created a GRUB boot floppy:

URL:
http://www.yolinux.com/TUTORIALS/LinuxTutorialRecoveryAndBootDisk.html

fdformat /dev/fd0H1440
mke2fs /dev/fd0
mount -t ext2 /dev/fd0 /mnt/floppy
grub-install --root-directory=/mnt/floppy '(fd0)'
cp /boot/grub/grub.conf /mnt/floppy/boot/grub/grub.conf
umount /mnt/floppy

The grub-install generated grub entries for both Windows and Linux
because the computer already had Windows on the primary master and
Linux
on the primary slave drive.

I changed the jumpers to move my working, existing Windows desktop
hard drive to the primary slave and plugged in the laptop hard drive
using the 2.5" IDE to 3.5" IDE converter as the primary master.

As root using another Linux machine, I mounted the floppy and modified
the grub configurations to boot windows in the primary slave drive.
And unmounted the floppy
URL: http://forums.fedoraforum.org/archive/index.php/t-1166.html

title Windows (on primary slave IDE drive)
map (hd0) (hd1)
map (hd1) (hd0)
rootnoverify (hd1,0)
makeactive
chainloader +1
boot

Then I inserted the GRUB boot diskette, booted the computer my desktop
version of Windows and accessed the files I needed from my laptop hard
drive.

Thankfully, I was able to recover all the files I needed!

Good luck....Philip.

.

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