SATA Boot Order

Can someone advice the boot order for connected SATA Drives ? Is there a
boot order ? Can it be set?

I ask because I have (or should say had) a XP SATA drive and Windows 7 SATA
drive both connected to SATA 1 and SATA 3 ports on motherboard - test bed
system.

System wouldn't start up, rebooted then options to recover or start normally.

disconnectng XP drive, Windows 7 would not boot (drive letter susepected
changed) and with only XP disk connected, it still wanted to boot windows 7
(I'd like an explanation of this !!!).

Result. Can't boot from either; looks like mbr corrupt on both. Tried to
fix XP mbr/boot sector but never got option to run recovery console. As far
as it was concerned there was no windows installation on disk???

barrowhill wrote:
Can someone advice the boot order for connected SATA Drives ? Is there a
boot order ? Can it be set?

I ask because I have (or should say had) a XP SATA drive and Windows 7 SATA
drive both connected to SATA 1 and SATA 3 ports on motherboard - test bed
system.

System wouldn't start up, rebooted then options to recover or start normally.

disconnectng XP drive, Windows 7 would not boot (drive letter susepected
changed) and with only XP disk connected, it still wanted to boot windows 7
(I'd like an explanation of this !!!).

Result. Can't boot from either; looks like mbr corrupt on both. Tried to
fix XP mbr/boot sector but never got option to run recovery console. As far
as it was concerned there was no windows installation on disk???

If your intention is to have two OSes, and have them managed by one
boot manager, then you can leave both drives connected during the
installation of the OSes. However, whatever the OS installer does
to your disks, will only be perfectly consistent if both disks
and both OSes remain present.

If you want to prevent the OS installers, from screwing up the
boot information on other drives, disconnect those drives,
*before* you install the second OS.

Whether I'm installing Linux, or installing Windows, I've learned
the hard way, that *only* the target hard drive should be connected
during the initial install. After the OS is bootable, you can connect
the other drives, install drivers or whatever.

Now, your problem is, even though you have two drives, the installation
is set up, such that the booting of both drives, is vectored through
the boot management on one of the drives. You'll need to figure out
how the boot management works on each drive, and how restoration
of booting works on each disk, in order to correct the problem.

You have the right idea, in seeking to find a Recovery Console,
in order to experiment with the fixmbr or fixboot commands. My
guess is, all you'd need is fixmbr, but I could be wrong. On
WinXP, there is also boot.ini, which you can examine with a text
editor.

I found a bootable Recovery Console here, but I don't know where
this came from originally. I haven't tested this yet. A quick
look with 7ZIP, shows it has an i386 folder with 222 files in it.
(The first level of the ZIP is xp_rec_con.iso and you use a
program like Nero, to convert that into a bootable CD. Don't just
"copy" the file to a CD.)

http://web.archive.org/*/http://www....xp_rec_con.zip

Paul

barrowhill wrote:
Can someone advice the boot order for connected SATA Drives ? Is there a
boot order ? Can it be set?

I ask because I have (or should say had) a XP SATA drive and Windows 7 SATA
drive both connected to SATA 1 and SATA 3 ports on motherboard - test bed
system.

System wouldn't start up, rebooted then options to recover or start normally.

disconnectng XP drive, Windows 7 would not boot (drive letter susepected
changed) and with only XP disk connected, it still wanted to boot windows 7
(I'd like an explanation of this !!!).

Result. Can't boot from either; looks like mbr corrupt on both. Tried to
fix XP mbr/boot sector but never got option to run recovery console. As far
as it was concerned there was no windows installation on disk???

If your intention is to have two OSes, and have them managed by one
boot manager, then you can leave both drives connected during the
installation of the OSes. However, whatever the OS installer does
to your disks, will only be perfectly consistent if both disks
and both OSes remain present.

If you want to prevent the OS installers, from screwing up the
boot information on other drives, disconnect those drives,
*before* you install the second OS.

Whether I'm installing Linux, or installing Windows, I've learned
the hard way, that *only* the target hard drive should be connected
during the initial install. After the OS is bootable, you can connect
the other drives, install drivers or whatever.

Now, your problem is, even though you have two drives, the installation
is set up, such that the booting of both drives, is vectored through
the boot management on one of the drives. You'll need to figure out
how the boot management works on each drive, and how restoration
of booting works on each disk, in order to correct the problem.

You have the right idea, in seeking to find a Recovery Console,
in order to experiment with the fixmbr or fixboot commands. My
guess is, all you'd need is fixmbr, but I could be wrong. On
WinXP, there is also boot.ini, which you can examine with a text
editor.

I found a bootable Recovery Console here, but I don't know where
this came from originally. I haven't tested this yet. A quick
look with 7ZIP, shows it has an i386 folder with 222 files in it.
(The first level of the ZIP is xp_rec_con.iso and you use a
program like Nero, to convert that into a bootable CD. Don't just
"copy" the file to a CD.)

http://web.archive.org/*/http://www....xp_rec_con.zip

Paul

barrowhill wrote:
Can someone advice the boot order for connected SATA Drives ? Is there a
boot order ? Can it be set?

I ask because I have (or should say had) a XP SATA drive and Windows 7 SATA
drive both connected to SATA 1 and SATA 3 ports on motherboard - test bed
system.

System wouldn't start up, rebooted then options to recover or start normally.

disconnectng XP drive, Windows 7 would not boot (drive letter susepected
changed) and with only XP disk connected, it still wanted to boot windows 7
(I'd like an explanation of this !!!).

Result. Can't boot from either; looks like mbr corrupt on both. Tried to
fix XP mbr/boot sector but never got option to run recovery console. As far
as it was concerned there was no windows installation on disk???

(Reposted - used wrong server to reach Microsoft...)

If your intention is to have two OSes, and have them managed by one
boot manager, then you can leave both drives connected during the
installation of the OSes. However, whatever the OS installer does
to your disks, will only be perfectly consistent if both disks
and both OSes remain present.

If you want to prevent the OS installers, from screwing up the
boot information on other drives, disconnect those drives,
*before* you install the second OS.

Whether I'm installing Linux, or installing Windows, I've learned
the hard way, that *only* the target hard drive should be connected
during the initial install. After the OS is bootable, you can connect
the other drives, install drivers or whatever.

Now, your problem is, even though you have two drives, the installation
is set up, such that the booting of both drives, is vectored through
the boot management on one of the drives. You'll need to figure out
how the boot management works on each drive, and how restoration
of booting works on each disk, in order to correct the problem.

You have the right idea, in seeking to find a Recovery Console,
in order to experiment with the fixmbr or fixboot commands. My
guess is, all you'd need is fixmbr, but I could be wrong. On
WinXP, there is also boot.ini, which you can examine with a text
editor.

I found a bootable Recovery Console here, but I don't know where
this came from originally. I haven't tested this yet. A quick
look with 7ZIP, shows it has an i386 folder with 222 files in it.
(The first level of the ZIP is xp_rec_con.iso and you use a
program like Nero, to convert that into a bootable CD. Don't just
"copy" the file to a CD.)

http://web.archive.org/*/http://www....xp_rec_con.zip

Paul

barrowhill wrote:
Can someone advice the boot order for connected SATA Drives ? Is there a
boot order ? Can it be set?

I ask because I have (or should say had) a XP SATA drive and Windows 7 SATA
drive both connected to SATA 1 and SATA 3 ports on motherboard - test bed
system.

System wouldn't start up, rebooted then options to recover or start normally.

disconnectng XP drive, Windows 7 would not boot (drive letter susepected
changed) and with only XP disk connected, it still wanted to boot windows 7
(I'd like an explanation of this !!!).

Result. Can't boot from either; looks like mbr corrupt on both. Tried to
fix XP mbr/boot sector but never got option to run recovery console. As far
as it was concerned there was no windows installation on disk???

(Reposted - used wrong server to reach Microsoft...)

If your intention is to have two OSes, and have them managed by one
boot manager, then you can leave both drives connected during the
installation of the OSes. However, whatever the OS installer does
to your disks, will only be perfectly consistent if both disks
and both OSes remain present.

If you want to prevent the OS installers, from screwing up the
boot information on other drives, disconnect those drives,
*before* you install the second OS.

Whether I'm installing Linux, or installing Windows, I've learned
the hard way, that *only* the target hard drive should be connected
during the initial install. After the OS is bootable, you can connect
the other drives, install drivers or whatever.

Now, your problem is, even though you have two drives, the installation
is set up, such that the booting of both drives, is vectored through
the boot management on one of the drives. You'll need to figure out
how the boot management works on each drive, and how restoration
of booting works on each disk, in order to correct the problem.

You have the right idea, in seeking to find a Recovery Console,
in order to experiment with the fixmbr or fixboot commands. My
guess is, all you'd need is fixmbr, but I could be wrong. On
WinXP, there is also boot.ini, which you can examine with a text
editor.

I found a bootable Recovery Console here, but I don't know where
this came from originally. I haven't tested this yet. A quick
look with 7ZIP, shows it has an i386 folder with 222 files in it.
(The first level of the ZIP is xp_rec_con.iso and you use a
program like Nero, to convert that into a bootable CD. Don't just
"copy" the file to a CD.)

http://web.archive.org/*/http://www....xp_rec_con.zip

Paul

On Wed, 18 Nov 2009 07:50:02 -0800, barrowhill
wrote:

Can someone advice the boot order for connected SATA Drives ? Is there a
boot order ? Can it be set?

Booting begins with the motherboard Bios. If you have more than one
Sata drive, you can tell the Bios which physical drive to boot from in
the Bios setting Hard Disk Boot Priority, Hard Disk Drives, or
directly in the boot sequence, depending on the design of the Bios.

I ask because I have (or should say had) a XP SATA drive and Windows 7 SATA
drive both connected to SATA 1 and SATA 3 ports on motherboard - test bed
system.

System wouldn't start up, rebooted then options to recover or start normally.

How far does it get? Do you see the Windows 7 boot menu? What happens
when you try to boot either operating system?


disconnectng XP drive, Windows 7 would not boot (drive letter susepected
changed) and with only XP disk connected, it still wanted to boot windows 7
(I'd like an explanation of this !!!).

Problem has nothing to do with drive letters. When you see the
Microsoft boot menu, it means that both operating systems boot from
the same physical disk drive, which in this case is the XP drive. This
happens because when Windows 7 was installed, it knew that the XP
drive was the boot drive because of the Bios setting, so Windows 7
setup installed its boot manager on the XP drive.

If you remove the XP drive, then the Bios will by default boot from
the Windows 7 drive. Booting fails since the Windows 7 drive does not
contain boot manager.

If you remove the Windows 7 drive, the boot manger still exists on the
XP drive, but if you try to boot Windows 7, it will obviously fail
since the Windows 7 drive is missing.


Result. Can't boot from either; looks like mbr corrupt on both. Tried to
fix XP mbr/boot sector but never got option to run recovery console. As far
as it was concerned there was no windows installation on disk???

Problem has nothing to do with MBR.

On Wed, 18 Nov 2009 07:50:02 -0800, barrowhill
wrote:

Can someone advice the boot order for connected SATA Drives ? Is there a
boot order ? Can it be set?

Booting begins with the motherboard Bios. If you have more than one
Sata drive, you can tell the Bios which physical drive to boot from in
the Bios setting Hard Disk Boot Priority, Hard Disk Drives, or
directly in the boot sequence, depending on the design of the Bios.

I ask because I have (or should say had) a XP SATA drive and Windows 7 SATA
drive both connected to SATA 1 and SATA 3 ports on motherboard - test bed
system.

System wouldn't start up, rebooted then options to recover or start normally.

How far does it get? Do you see the Windows 7 boot menu? What happens
when you try to boot either operating system?


disconnectng XP drive, Windows 7 would not boot (drive letter susepected
changed) and with only XP disk connected, it still wanted to boot windows 7
(I'd like an explanation of this !!!).

Problem has nothing to do with drive letters. When you see the
Microsoft boot menu, it means that both operating systems boot from
the same physical disk drive, which in this case is the XP drive. This
happens because when Windows 7 was installed, it knew that the XP
drive was the boot drive because of the Bios setting, so Windows 7
setup installed its boot manager on the XP drive.

If you remove the XP drive, then the Bios will by default boot from
the Windows 7 drive. Booting fails since the Windows 7 drive does not
contain boot manager.

If you remove the Windows 7 drive, the boot manger still exists on the
XP drive, but if you try to boot Windows 7, it will obviously fail
since the Windows 7 drive is missing.


Result. Can't boot from either; looks like mbr corrupt on both. Tried to
fix XP mbr/boot sector but never got option to run recovery console. As far
as it was concerned there was no windows installation on disk???

Problem has nothing to do with MBR.