The swap should take less time than posting here.
With that out of the way you will find that boot managers are a good idea for this and that nuttiness is the rule when it comes to multiple drives and OS installs. I have yet to find the "best" solution so I go stock for now. I'll install UBUNTU so I have a relatively easy boot manager that has a gazillion pages about use, repair and troubleshooting. It also gives me access to files and more if some OS fails (I can boot the LIve CD!)
So that's my advice. Use some boot manager and learn about Live CDs.
Bob
Hi Folks.
I had two SATA HDDs, one 320Gb in 3 partitions including the C: XP installation
I formatted the other 500Gb drive and installed Win XP on it. I presumed that I would get a dual-boot option when finished, but the system rebooted with the 500Gb drive as the C: drive.
No sign of the other XP install now unless using the recovery console, where both appear. This is now the D: drive
This happened because I had the 320Gb and 500Gb drives on the wrong sides of the SATA connector on the motherboard, which of course never made any difference while there was only one operating system.
I'm a bit worried about which process to use to get back the MBR with both so I can dual-boot.
Can I just swap over the SATA connections???
I've backed up all the data on the partitions on the original 320 drive in case overwriting the MBR destroys access to the partition (recovery console warning when using FixMBR), but will it have any effect on the NEW install? because that's where the data is backed up.
I know I can run Fixboot or FixMBR from the recovery console inside the drive I want to modify but not sure of the outcome as regards ending up with both drives as options on boot-up?
Any offers? I couldn't find a link to dual-boot problems like this when running two versions of XP.
TIA
Tim

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