Harddrive help

[Tim in AZ]

I have 2 ide harddrives. I would like to be able to switch between the two, meaning be able to work off one and then switch to the other and use it when I like. I have them set up as master and slave at this time. What do I need to do to be able to switch between the two? I am running XP pro on both.

 

[JN]

I have 2 ide harddrives. I would like to be able to switch between the two, meaning be able to work off one and then switch to the other and use it when I like. I have them set up as master and slave at this time. What do I need to do to be able to switch between the two? I am running XP pro on both.

Hi Tim,

In your bios, you might have a 'boot order' option. On some bios's it will actually allow you to select which hard disk you would like to boot from so that might be worth checking out.

Other than that, you only option i can see would be to use a boot manager program like one of these:

http://btmgr.webframe.org/

http://www.pcworld.com/downloads/file_description/0,fid,22776,00.asp

http://www.osloader.com/

Let us know how you get on

 

[FragTek]

EPoX = teh Magic Boot User selectable boot device w/o entering BIOS, w00t w00t!

 

[CrArC]

I don't fully understand this. Why would you want to do that anyway? Generally if I wanted to switch drives I'd use the OS selection menu that pops up with Windows 2000/XP/2003 srvr when more than one OS is installed....

 

[FragTek]

I don't fully understand this. Why would you want to do that anyway? Generally if I wanted to switch drives I'd use the OS selection menu that pops up with Windows 2000/XP/2003 srvr when more than one OS is installed....

Example:

Your BIOS boot priority is setup to boot in the following order:

HDD

Floppy

CD-Rom

But lets you want to boot from a CD. So instead of going into ur BIOS and changing the boot priority and rebooting the system, you just hit one little keystroke during your post sequence and a menu pops up asking you which device you'd like to boot from.

Very convenient!