Re: Un-expected Bonus with HDD failure

As an added note, even though I do no like to do this, I can power up my
mobile rack after the system is up and running from the SATA drive, and the
mobile rack still assumes drive N:

"Mike G" <justme@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:u8A6DhONHHA.4888@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
In my case, I watched the drive letter assignments, thus confirming what
was happening. Normal SATA config, the os=C:, the DATA disk= D: and I
manually assigned drive N: to the mobile rack. However when I boot up
with the mobile rack powered, it assumed the C:, Data was still B: and the
sata drive (previously C:) assumed the N: drive letter. When I installed
the new drive, I manually partitioned it, formated it (using CASPERXP)and
assigned it to N:, copied over the OS from the mobile rack (IDE), shut
down the mobile rack and rebooted. The new SATA drive took C: again being
Drive 0 and returned to normal. In my bios selection for booting
sequence, it has remained at HDD, CDROM, Floppy, as far as I can
determine, is an IDE sequence.

"Anna" <myname@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:eACvOLONHHA.4916@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

"Mike G" <justme@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:u9tQV8MNHHA.3288@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Winxp system with 2 SATA HDD, one is OS the other is DATA. I have a
removable HDD attached via one of my IDE channels which I turn on and
off when I do backups. My main SATA HDD started having failures and I
decided to use CasperXP to do a copy of my sytem to this removable HDD.
When I did a reboot after the copy, I noticed the machine booted to the
removable HDD and worked perfectly without any hassels. (I sure like
CasperXP for that.) When I turn off the removable HDD, the sytem boots
normally to the SATA drive. I was able to use the removable HDD and
CAsper to format and copy system to new SATA drive. Could not be any
easier. Bonus is that I can boot normally to the SATA Drive or the
removable HDD be it another copy of my system or Vista or what ever!


Mike:
You were more fortunate than you think...

Presumably the system boots to your removable PATA HDD (in its mobile
rack), i.e., the destination drive in the disk cloning operation rather
than the SATA HDD - the source disk - because your BIOS boot priority
order indicates that the IDE drive occupies a higher order of priority
than the SATA HDD. When the PATA removable HDD is disconnected then the
system will boot to the next bootable device in the boot priority order.
At least I think that is what's happening in your situation.

The reason I say you were more fortunate than you think is because it's
generally good practice that immediately following the disk cloning
operation to disconnect the source HDD and make that initial boot *only*
with the destination HDD connected. In many (but not all) cases when both
drives are connected following the disk cloning operation and the system
boots to the source drive, there will be subsequent boot problems with
the destination drive in that the system will assign a drive letter to
the destination drive other than C:. In that scenario the destination HDD
will not be bootable if it is the *only* HDD connected during bootup. The
system *will* boot to that destination HDD as long as the source HDD is
connected at the time of bootup. And in that case there is no practical
way that I'm aware of to change the drive letter of the destination HDD
from whatever it is to C:.

Again, I emphasize that this situation does not *always* occur. In a
significant number of cases no subsequent boot problems will arise
affecting the destination HDD when both the source & destination drives
are connected during the initial boot following the disk cloning
operation. But it's something for the user to be aware of.
Anna





.

Relevant Pages