[Grimm]

i love christmas, i got my new hard drive the day after christmas. my computer is the most stubborn machine i have ever seen. my uncle, who works for cisco, making software that goes into modems and routers. he and my mom went to comp USA and got a 200gb IDE hard drive. turns out my system was top of the line wen it was issued like 2 or 3 years ago, so it had S/ATA, go figure -_-. so we exchanged it for the only S/ATA HDD left, a 300gb. its beautiful, now here comes the problem:

i got a windows installer ISO that i burned to a CD, it can install any form of windows XP 2002. so i put windows Media Center on my old drive. it works great, and i installed all drivers and a few programs.

if i had a set of IDE hard drives i could set jumpers to be primary master and secondary master and have a successful dual boot. wut im doing now is opening the comp, unplugging the main drive and letting the comp boot to the other one.

the question: S/ATA has no physical jumpers, just 2 different ports, 1 is the primary master, the other is the secondary slave (i think, it could be the primary slave) so how am i supposed to get my MCE drive to be secondary master so it will bring up the OS choices at boot up and be a successful dual boot.

i have heard about an S/ATA cable being a double cable, one for master, one for slave, but mine isnt that, its just one cable....it came with the drive and the 40gb drive is just using the factory set cable it came with....

[Melissa]

hate to sound stupid but if your uncle works for cisco wouldnt it be easier for him to look into it.

also i didnt think you could have master and slave situation with sata thought that was pata.. and sata uses its own cable ..

erm well all i can think of is look in the bios for which is set to boto first or you can dual boot maybe using some of that software to edit your boot.ini file that is what shows you your available systems on start up and you select accordingly

why dont u boot to one with th other as a data drive, copy all over to the 200GB drive and just get the old one either as a slave or just get rid if you dont need it.

[Grimm]

u mean set a dual boot on 2 partitions on one drive? that ould work but id rather have my own drive, cuz theres no security on it at the moment, and i dont want it screwin with my main drive.

my uncle did look at it, but he sed thats not his specialty cuz all he does is make software for routers and modems.

[Phoenix]

u mean set a dual boot on 2 partitions on one drive? that ould work but id rather have my own drive, cuz theres no security on it at the moment, and i dont want it screwin with my main drive.

my uncle did look at it, but he sed thats not his specialty cuz all he does is make software for routers and modems.

Yes but normally people that go into that area of expertise have experience in more then one area of ICT. It would be very rare to find someone in the IT industry that believes that their skills are limited to the particular aspect of work they are currently in. Which is probably why Mel assumed that you uncle would probably know more about it.

Pho~

[Chantelle]

I think Pho is right, its slightly odd to find someone to such a speciality that they wouldn't know something like that but in another sense I am not like toatally surprised, I knew a programmer who didnt know how to change a sound card once..

I think what mel meant was you have windows on both drives which by the sounds of it you do and tehn you can dual boot from there so on start up in theory it shoudl ask you which disk you want to boot too.

However that aside you meantioned theres no security for it well..

1) on your "safe copy" download the setups of the secuirty you need such as firewall anti virus

2) copy these to the other drive

3) reboot in your new copy but disconnect from the net (unplug from router if necessary), setup your security

4) Get your uncle to give you a router, and get him to set it up for you!! he cannot be excused from that!! :-p

[Grimm]

he already baught the drive lol i dpnt want to make him give me a router. he was here, he helped me set it up and confesed he didnt know how to make it dual boot. but heres wut goin on in my comp:

i hit the power button
it boots
shows me the windows logo on my 300gb
then shows me my welcome menu

now im no expert, but i believe somewhere in there should be an OS choice menu, which is wuts confusing me. wut cisco has taught me is that if u have a drive is set to slave, it wont detect it as a main boot system and wont boot to it unless u tell it to. now normally i would set the jumpers to make it secondary master, but since its SATA i cant do that cuz theres no jumpers. so wut am i supposed to do? the boot order btw is:

1. 300gb
2. cd-rom/usb device
3. (nothing cuz there is no secondary master)
4. 40gb (set as secondary slave)

i think thats it, ill check it later

so my question is how do i dual boot with 2 OSs on 2 different SATA drives. both OSs are windows xp (pro on the 300, and media center on the 40)

[Phoenix]

Google "how to dual boot" and you should find many tutorials helping you through this.

[Chantelle]

you should I think be able to change the boot from bios

although i imagine if you edit around with eth boot ini fil that might work.

problem is I have heard boot loaders are always a bit iffy,

[Melissa]

well unless you pick and chose from the bios i think you may need to edit your boot.ini thing..

tbh it sounds complicated so not sure if thats a good idea.

incidentally why are you dual booting 2 copies of xp?

why not setup on your new faster drive and even have the old one just a data drive?.

So boot to old drive and copy as my sisterspost.. or if not unplug new drive boot to old download scurity then plug back in boot to new copy over and then install...

then just migrate your stuff over and wipe..

i think cisco taught you wrong.. you could have no master and a slave and it would boot but there is no master slave with sata.