boot.ini what to write...

heylo people,

basically, i've got 2 harddrives, 1 60gb IDE, and 1 80gb SATA... both have windows2000 on, but i want to be able to choose which one i boot from at startup..

i'm pretty sure it should be simple to do with changing/adding some stuff in the boot.ini, but, they are exactly the same:

Quote:

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[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT="Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional" /fastdetect

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despite one being on a sata controller, and one being on the ide controller (using an asus nforce2 board btw).

what do i add so that i can have the 60gb default booting and then choose the sata one if i want to ? (without faffing around in the bios)

i had a look around microsoft support site, but i couldnt find what i wanted there..

many thanks

Mark

Probably one being multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT="Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional" /fastdetect and te other being multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINNT="Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional" /fastdetect ?

not suyre about 2 disks with same os

Mine is:

[boot loader]
timeout=1
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WIN2K
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WIN2K="Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional" /fastdetect
C:\="Microsoft Windows"

It's been a while since I've multibooted using XP's loader - I GRUB it all the way these days.

Still, you could just create new entries rather than overwrite old ones - so there's no harm in some of them not working while you test it out.

The only problem I see with booting from the SATA drive if you've normally gone from the IDE one is that when windows tries to mount the system volume it'll go "crap crap crap I've got no driver for it and it's a non-standard interface!" However if you install windows on it properly you're OK.

I'm starting to ramble, so I stop now.

i'll go add a load of lines to the boot.ini and work out which one works... heh, just guesswork hmm

Yeah just don't go and dick with it so that you can't boot, lol.

Label the "OSes" appropriately.

working 'logically' here, its none of the below:

Quote:

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multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINNT="partition2" /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(1)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT="disk 1" /fastdetect
multi(1)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT="multi 1" /fastdetect

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not sure what this rdisk business is about.. but i'm gonna write out some more, and try them again :)

mark


edit: looked some more on google, found out there is a scsi() aswell as a multi() gonna try that bastard out in a minute :)

Linux and GRUB (even LILO) - /dev/hda or /dev/hdc = device: hard drive a, or device: hard drive c

However, whoever designed the NT bootloader needs slapping with a wet fish.

scsi() did nowt aswell.. ah well... it was gonna be for a month or so... then i'll format the ide drive and install some flavour of linux on it, how easy is using grub or whatever, cos i dont want it touching my sata drive (i guess you cant do it from the NT bootloader :()

mark

- might just use a floppy to boot linux perhaps...

why not look in your bios and change it from eg. hdd0 / ide1 to hdd1 / ide2

thats what i used to do i had 2 drives

beanfro, i want to be able to choose between the drives easily ;) i'm having to go into the bios atm cos i havent worked it out yet...

i made a bit of progress just then, telling it to boot d:\windows, and it got to the end of the dos-type loading of windows 2003 (before the boot screen) then rebooted... so there's something sketchy going on there... still cant get 2003 to see my 2000 harddrive tho :(

mark