Booting up to different drives, I can't seem to make it work

[karlrschneider]

I have 3 hard drives in the machine and want to be able to boot up any one of them. My BIOS offers a 'boot menu' at startup (F8) and when I invoke it, it does show the 3 different drives and lets me scroll to any of them but no matter which one I choose, it always boots to the primary master.
I can of course -access- the other 2 but can't make the system START on them. I have the setup configured to boot from 1)floppy which it does if there's a bootable FD in the drive, 2)CD which it also does with a bootable CD then IDE-0 (which is my primary master)...but I'm thinking the 'boot menu' choice should over-ride the default, right?

I went into setup and changed the boot options to totally eliminate the primary master but it STILL boots up to IDE-0! Either my mb is broken or I'm too farkin' stoopid to make it work. Any ideas?

[bemildred]

1. There are a couple different issues, but

the obvious thing would be if the 2nd & third drives
do not have boot blocks in sector 0.

[karlrschneider]

3. Well, they should have, I fdisk'd them & formatted with system files

I haven't bothered yet to physically swap them cable-wise...and I know I should but it's just a PITA...ya know? But I'll bite the bullet and do it.
Maybe tomorrow....thanks!

[bemildred]

5. You have to install an MBR in sector zero.

That does not happen automatically in fdisk, as I remember, although it will be done in an OS install to that drive. Your BIOS is looking for one, and only finds the one on drive 0, after checking the others (I think). If it were the only drive, you would get a "no boot media" message or something like that, whereas if the MBR was there but no OS was installed you would get something to the effect that the OS load failed.

The MBR reads the BIOS partition information and starts the loading of the active partition.

YMMV.

[karlrschneider]

7. I'll double check that but I'm fairly sure fdisk showed all partitions

flagged active...thanks
I'll try again with the /mbr option

[RoyGBiv]

2. Question ...

I am assuming each of the three drives has been formatted as a boot drive, that is that you've formatted each of them as the primary OS with all the drivers necessary for your MB. Are all three of these drives formatted with some variety of Windows?

If so, Windows doesn't like being a slave, which would help explain at least one of those drives not booting. I am surprised it defaults to IDE-0 but not indredibly so. At one point I had a master and a slave that were both Windows drives, each of which had at some point been the primary. As IDE-1, neither would boot. It just hung and, essentially, told me to piss off.

If these are Windows drives, one key here is that they all need to be configured with the chipset of your MB. Another issue that can arise is you have a Windows drive that was configured on a MB with the VIA chipset and try to use it as a boot drive on a MB with the nVidia or SiS chipset. It won't boot in those cases. It could be that your BIOS is intelligent enough to realize this and runs through all the installed drives until it finds one that will boot.

More questions than answer I know, but there are some variables that we need to give a good solution.

[karlrschneider]

4. I tried several combinations...I format and configure the drives booting

from a Windoze ME floppy disk (also have 98 and others)...go through the Fdisk and format the usual way. I tried just installing pure old DOS on drive #2 (fdisk sees the FAT16 file system) and tried to boot to that one but nada. And I don't know right now what chipset in in this machine, I change hardware about as often as my underwear :D (not really)

My primary master is Windoze ME which I've used for years without many problems...and what I'm wanting to do is upgrade one drive to XP (I bought it legal and all) and have the ability to boot into it when I need it.

This system has seemed to be a little flaky for some time but I can't nail it to either a hard or software problem. I guess I probably should just
start from ground zero but I have a lot of stuff that isn't easily replaceable, that works and don't wanna lose.

But I think you have something...the #3 drive is the same model as #1 the primary that I have used as a backup for years...using Norton's Ghost to clone the partition on a regular basis...but oddly I can't get THAT drive to boot. I'd just like to be able to do all this without having to re-connect cables (I really need the #2 'small' drive for some non-updated
old DOS programs I use)

Thanks for the reply, I'll do some more tinkering and I might call on your superior expertise in future. :D
ks

[hobbit709]

6. Multiple boot systems are always a pain.

Even if you can get it to do it right, if anything glitches, all of it screws up. What I did was get removable drive trays and put each separate OS on a different drive. Then all I have to to is shut down, unlock the tray, remove and replace with a different tray, turn the key and turn on the computer. That way each one is separate and I have all systems set to recognize my slave drives where I keep my data.

[karlrschneider]

8. That does sound like the best solution...thanks

ks

[bvar22]

9. You might try a utility that comes with Partition Magic 8.

It is called PQBoot, and it makes it easy to load as many copies of Windows as you want without a boot manager.
It automatically does what you were trying above. It sets the partition (HD) you want to boot to as "Active", and at the same time hides the partitions containing the other OSes.
At one time I had ME, 98se, and XP installed on two different HardDrives and PQBoot worked perfectly.
I always install my OS in a small partition with only drivers specific to that OS. All data and 3rd Party software goes into a different partition that remains visible to whatever OS I happen to be using.

If you plan it right, all the drive letters will remain constant whatever system you boot to.

The only drawback is you must decide which OS you want to boot to next before shutdown, or use the floppy to set the active and "unhide" the partition you want on startup.

PartitionMagic8 is available for "Free Trail" at several places on the Net.