OT: Want a new hard drive...

[PvK]

Imperator Fyron said:

Fortunately, reality is much different from what you have heard. This isn't windows 98 we are talking about, here.

Is there a known issue with Win98? I've done that kind of HD manuever several times on Win98 and seen no problems.

[Fyron]

Windows 98 doesn't have a boot loader in the sense of the nt loader, lilo, grub, etc. It takes over as the only bootable option once you install it onto a drive. That's all I meant by it, in reference to BM's misinformation about XP destroying both (Windows) OSes when you do a multi-boot installation. You can certainly juggle hdds for different 98 installs, but XP doesn't destroy other Windows OSes, typically.

[Baron Munchausen]

He wasn't asking about multi-boot installation. He was asking about attaching two drives with two independently installed copies of the same OS to one computer. (XP 'Home' and 'Pro' are essentially the same OS.) I repeat, this is reputed to be dangerous. Directions for making backups by 'cloning' from one HD to another are very explicit not to try to boot the computer from the drives while drives with both copies are attached, but to only boot from the cloning utility (a CD, that is). Unless you have an elaborate boot manager like GRUB which can hide one of the copies from the other. Two different installations may not be exactly like a cloned backup and an original, but it sure isn't the same as a multi-boot installation where Windows has had a chance to sort itself out, either.

[Combat Wombat]

Imperator Fyron said:

Fortunately, reality is much different from what you have heard. This isn't windows 98 we are talking about, here. Sure winnt's boot loader is no Grub

Please note that Grub in reality is a horrible program, I have ubuntu and windows on my tablet and I delete ubuntu but for some reason Grub crashed whenever I turn on the computer even if I don't try to boot into the Ubuntu installation that doesn't exist anymore... So I had to reinstall ubuntu just turn on my computer again and currently have no idea how to get rid of it without this happening again.

[Baron Munchausen]

Deh! You remove GRUB and expect it to continue to function? It's stored on the Linux partition, you know. If you delete your C:\Windows directory do you expect windows to run?

If you don't want Linux anymore you should run Windows install again and have it reset/rewrite the boot sector. Then you can remove your Linux partition with no problems because it won't be looking for the missing GRUB.

[Fyron]

Yeah, unless you tell the GRUB installer to install into the MBR, it kind of depends on you not deleting it to function...

Run the fixmbr program from the windows CD's recovery console to get a new NT boot loader in the MBR.

For reference, you can screw up NT's boot loader by deleting it too. Try installing Win98 on your machine after installing XP.

[PvK]

Different hard drives have different jumper settings available. The usual ones are Master, Slave, and Cable Select. The BIOS on your mother board decides based on the cable position and what the drive tells it (determined by jumper settings on the drive) which drive is the Master, and uses that drive's boot area to determine where the OS(es) it will use is(are).

In general, you should be able to set up an OS on a new drive, and then put in an old drive from an old system, setting that drive in position and/or jumpers to make it the slave, and you'll get what you want.

However, since XP has evil "authentication" software designed to give M$ an excuse to invalidate your license and make you buy Windohs again (see, it doesn't abuse its monopoly position enough to get enough sales, because its goal is as much profit as possible, so nothing is ever enough), and one excuse it uses is thinking that you may be trying to install Windohs on a new computer. Since it was installed on a computer with one hard drive, and now there's another hard drive, it may "determine" that you need to do annoying things to prove you have the right to run Windohs XP...

Personally, I'd upgrade to Win2K Pro instead of XP Pro. No evil authentication, less annoying crud, less bloat.

[PvK]

Depends how much data there is to move. Moving the hard drive is often really easy and fast, and having 2 physical hard drives can be nice for performance, too (e.g. OS swap file on its own drive).