Boots from Master if slave is connected

[Huddy]

:bounce: Thanks for the advice Blackstuff,but trying to reduce the size of my C: drive so that I can create a mirror on minimal cd's I must have deleted something important.On shutting down I got blue screens,fdisk,registary recovery you name it.Now I can't boot up,not even in safe mode.However remembering I had done a disk to disk copy to my D drive I changed the jumpers and leads to make D master and C slave (won't boot up in D on its own) I have managed to get up and running.
The question is what do I do now.Should I reload XP on D(which is really where I want my OS )and somehow copy all my files and settings from C. I do have a windows back up file 2gb+ should I use this(three weeks old) and go down the Ghost image route.
One other thing when I eventually get sorted will my new HD 7200 rpm on work at the 5400rpm of the old one as master and slave.?
Thanks

 

[zephead]

install windows on the newer drive and connect the old one to it, you should be able to retrieve your files (depending on just what you did). the RPMs of a drive have nothing to do with compatibility, btw.

 

[Samstoned]

there are a bunch of differant ways to go about boot from setup.
you can have your mbr on C but install OS to D
you can make D mbr and have the OS on it
some of your configurations will depend on how your bios handles boot sequences
make sure you have a organized lay out don't want to loose those files
I keep it simple C has MBR and the OS on it in 1 small partition.
if you plan on using the other drive as stand alone just in cases make sure you make that drive bootable also that means it will have it's own mbr
microsft has a utility to help set this up sysprep.
PS check the D drive for a boot.ini file
if it is not there it will be in c: drive copy it and paste to d:
I don't think this will damage anything and you can always delete it if it does not work
Sample Boot.ini File
This is a sample of a default Boot.ini file from a Windows XP Professional computer.
[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect
This is a sample of the above Boot.ini file after adding another partition running Windows 2000 Professional.
[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(1)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINNT="Windows 2000 Professional" /fastdetect

 

[Vigilante]

The short answer would be to format and load XP fresh on the best HDD you have.

If you have data-backup issues with that in mind. That's harder. But another short answer would be to hook the HDD up to another machine if applicable and put your data there for the interim.

Otherwise, you'll be stuck formatting and putting XP on the drive which does NOT have your data on it.
If BOTH HDD have data. A 2nd PC would be most helpful.