Changing boot drive

I've upgraded my machine at some point in the last year, where I added a new
500GB drive and moved my C: partition across to it. The previous 250GB drive
was left in for additional storage.

Just recently (while upgrading my BIOS) I realised that my system was still
booting from the 250GB drive even though Windows was on the other disk.

There is a fair possibility in the not too distant future that I'll replace
the 250GB disk with a larger disk, in which case I won't be able to boot. Is
there a safe and reliable way to change it so that the system boots from the
500GB disk?

CJM

FYI
The reason for this being that after cloneing a drive you have to shutdown,
disconnect the old C drive, if neccessary set the new drive as master then
reboot. Then shutdown a connect old drive as slave, before rebooting.
Currently I would suspect your old drive is still C and your win drive has
another letter

I know how to correct this in winxp but unsure about the Vista process
Its to do with the Master Boot record still being on the old C

"CJM" <> wrote in message
news:331C200E-94C7-4BCC-94A1-...
> I've upgraded my machine at some point in the last year, where I added a
> new 500GB drive and moved my C: partition across to it. The previous 250GB
> drive was left in for additional storage.
>
> Just recently (while upgrading my BIOS) I realised that my system was
> still booting from the 250GB drive even though Windows was on the other
> disk.
>
> There is a fair possibility in the not too distant future that I'll
> replace the 250GB disk with a larger disk, in which case I won't be able
> to boot. Is there a safe and reliable way to change it so that the system
> boots from the 500GB disk?
>
> CJM

"DL" <address@invalid> wrote in message
news:...
> FYI
> The reason for this being that after cloneing a drive you have to
> shutdown, disconnect the old C drive, if neccessary set the new drive as
> master then reboot. Then shutdown a connect old drive as slave, before
> rebooting.
> Currently I would suspect your old drive is still C and your win drive has
> another letter
>

No, my windows partition is definitely C:...

Hi,

The old drive is still the active one. You have to change the active volume
in disk manager (diskmgmt.msc) and then run a startup repair, preferably
with the old drive temporarily detached.

--
Best of Luck,

Rick Rogers, aka "Nutcase" - Microsoft MVP
http://mvp.support.microsoft.com/
Windows help - www.rickrogers.org
My thoughts http://rick-mvp.blogspot.com

"CJM" <> wrote in message
news:331C200E-94C7-4BCC-94A1-...
> I've upgraded my machine at some point in the last year, where I added a
> new 500GB drive and moved my C: partition across to it. The previous 250GB
> drive was left in for additional storage.
>
> Just recently (while upgrading my BIOS) I realised that my system was
> still booting from the 250GB drive even though Windows was on the other
> disk.
>
> There is a fair possibility in the not too distant future that I'll
> replace the 250GB disk with a larger disk, in which case I won't be able
> to boot. Is there a safe and reliable way to change it so that the system
> boots from the 500GB disk?
>
> CJM

But that does not make it the boot drive.

"CJM" <> wrote in message
news:28EB95A4-11DE-4720-853E-...
>
> "DL" <address@invalid> wrote in message
> news:...
>> FYI
>> The reason for this being that after cloneing a drive you have to
>> shutdown, disconnect the old C drive, if neccessary set the new drive as
>> master then reboot. Then shutdown a connect old drive as slave, before
>> rebooting.
>> Currently I would suspect your old drive is still C and your win drive
>> has another letter
>>
>
> No, my windows partition is definitely C:...

"Colin Barnhorst" <> wrote in message
news:979FC612-185B-43AF-ACC4-...
> But that does not make it the boot drive.

Quite.

Which takes me back to my original question... How do I set the disk
containing my current drive C to be the boot disk?

"Rick Rogers" <> wrote in message
news:eoTt$...
> Hi,
>
> The old drive is still the active one. You have to change the active
> volume in disk manager (diskmgmt.msc) and then run a startup repair,
> preferably with the old drive temporarily detached.
>

Rick,

I thought an active volume was the volume on a disk (containing one or more
other volumes) that was marked as the bootable volume? That is, there can be
one active volume per physical disk...

[I've just checked... this is correct - one volume per disk can be marked as
Active]

I'm not sure what you mean by a 'startup repair'. Coul you please elaborate?

Thanks

Chris

http://windowshelp.microsoft.com/Win...f3f351033.mspx

http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/tuto...torial148.html

http://articles.techrepublic.com.com...1-6131173.html


"CJM" <> wrote in message
news:BF7648C6-A6BB-4FE0-B65A-...
>
> "Rick Rogers" <> wrote in message
> news:eoTt$...
>> Hi,
>>
>> The old drive is still the active one. You have to change the active
>> volume in disk manager (diskmgmt.msc) and then run a startup repair,
>> preferably with the old drive temporarily detached.
>>
>
> Rick,
>
> I thought an active volume was the volume on a disk (containing one or
> more other volumes) that was marked as the bootable volume? That is, there
> can be one active volume per physical disk...
>
> [I've just checked... this is correct - one volume per disk can be marked
> as Active]
>
> I'm not sure what you mean by a 'startup repair'. Coul you please
> elaborate?
>
> Thanks
>
> Chris

None of this applies to the SATA interface

--

----
Crosspost, do not multipost http://www.blakjak.demon.co.uk/mul_crss.htm
How to ask a question http://support.microsoft.com/kb/555375
__________________________________________________ _______________________________


"DL" <address@invalid> wrote in message
news:...
> FYI
> The reason for this being that after cloneing a drive you have to
> shutdown, disconnect the old C drive, if neccessary set the new drive as
> master then reboot. Then shutdown a connect old drive as slave, before
> rebooting.
> Currently I would suspect your old drive is still C and your win drive has
> another letter

First, a little terminology:
What you appear to be talking about is the "System" drive (which your
BIOS will "boot" to, not the "Boot" drive which actually contains the
system.

You can easily check this by looking in Disk Manager and checlking which
one is labeled as "System" and which is labeled "Boot"

There are several ways to fix this, but the easiest is to copy from the
"System" drive to the "Boot" drive:
Bootmgr
Boot directory
Both of those are hidden/system so make sure you can view such files.
Then, go into your machine's BIOS settings and change the Boot priority
of the hard drives (there are several different terminologies so
interpret this freely). Make the drive with your system on it (the
"Boot" drive) the first in the drive sequence.

Then boot from your dvd and choose "repair" instead of "Install" and fix
up the boot files (I can't remember the exact terminology)


CJM wrote:
>
> "Colin Barnhorst" <> wrote in message
> news:979FC612-185B-43AF-ACC4-...
>> But that does not make it the boot drive.
>
> Quite.
>
> Which takes me back to my original question... How do I set the disk
> containing my current drive C to be the boot disk?
>
>