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Number   :  9097
Date     :  2004-11-01
Author   :  Garry Deane
Subject  :  Re: Why change jumpers to test newly cloned drive?
Size(KB) :  1



--- In xxcopy@yahoogroups.com, "burris millstone"  
wrote:
> Garry....
> 
> This question seems to surface periodically.
> 
> As I have indicated in the past, I XXClone from my C drive
> to each of my other two D&F drives. Kan's program creates for
> me a multiple boot scenario and when starting up, I get a
> choice of which drive I want to boot. The way I have it set
> is that I have 10 seconds to choose which drive will boot,
> or it defaults to C.
> I don't understand the need for switching cables and pins.
> This is with XPPro.
> 
> burris

When a disk boots, it relies on data in the MBR, boot sector
and partition table. These aren't files but rather data
written in the first few sectors of the disk. This boot
code then uses the files NTLDR, NTDETECT.COM and BOOT.INI
to load the boot menu and then the selected OS. The selected
OS may be on a different disk volume but the first part of
the boot sequence uses the above data on the boot drive
(actually called the system drive in MS speak).

As some portable computer users have found, they can boot
into the OS on a cloned disk when they use the above boot
code from the Quick Boot Disk or the original C: drive.
However some are having problems when they swap the drives
and try to boot directly from the 2nd drive when the
original drive is absent. This points to some problem
with either the MBR, boot sector, partition table or
BOOT.INI on the 2nd disk.

Swapping the cables or selecting the 2nd disk in the BIOS
as the boot drive tests the full boot sequence on that
drive and ensures that you'll be able to boot from it if
the original source drive is absent.

Note that you probably only ever need to do this test once.
Once the MBR, boot sector, partition table and BOOT.INI
have been initialised/created successfully on the 2nd disk,
xxclone won't change them unless you select the options
for then to be re-written.

Garry



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