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Swapping Boot Drive

Started by Stonicus Dec 16, 2005 at 12:17 PM 4 replies 1.2k views

Original Post

Dec 16, 2005 at 12:17 PM

I have a weird situation with my drives. My system had a 20GB drive on it with windows XP. I added a 120GB drive and moved my windows XP to that. So windows is on my 120GB D:. I bought a new 120GB yesterday ($40 at Best Buy whee!!) and went to replace the 20 GB, giving me two 120 GB drives. Well, the Windows is on the D:, but the C: has all the boot information. Removing the 20GB makes my puter not boot. I added the 2nd 120GB in as a 3rd drive, and it works fine. I want to make the first 120GB (the one with xp on it) be the main boot drive and take the 20gb out totally (to put into another puter). Any advice on how to achieve this would be helpful. If I am missing some relevant information, please ask and I will provide. Thank you.

jfclavette

138

jfclavette

Dec 16, 2005 at 12:19 PM

How, exactly, did you "move" your Windows XP ?

If D: has no bootloader, installing GRUB on it should work.

Stonicus

Author

Stonicus

Dec 16, 2005 at 12:22 PM

I reinstalled it on the d:. This was over a year ago, and has given me no problems.

jfclavette

138

jfclavette

Dec 16, 2005 at 12:26 PM

Well, then you just have to change the boot order in your BIOS, no ?

Unless, for some weird reason, Windows actually installed the bootloader on the 20GB and the OS on the 120GB. If that's the case, well yeah, installing GRUB should work.

Stonicus

Author

Stonicus

Dec 16, 2005 at 12:53 PM

Quote:
Unless, for some weird reason, Windows actually installed the bootloader on the 20GB and the OS on the 120GB. If that's the case, well yeah, installing GRUB should work.

This is what happened. At the time, I just shrugged it off and didn't think it'd be a problem. I'll try that GRUB when I get home from work. Thank you for the advice. =)

bakery2k1

Dec 16, 2005 at 5:04 PM

I don't think installing grub will work, since it only loads Windows by chain-loading the Windows boot sector, which is still on the 20GB drive. Instead, you need to copy ntldr and the associated boot files from the 20GB drive to the 120GB, then install the Windows boot sector (I'm not sure how to do this).

Alternatively, you can (probably) remove the 20GB drive and boot from your Windows CD to the recovery console, and repair from there.

Remember to backup first!

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