2 identical active partitions?

[yolagp]

Hi everybody, here I am, getting into trouble again. I just installed, partitioned and formatted a new hard disk. And now I have two identical partitions, I can't tell them from each other. Seems I did something wrong. Here's what I did:
I set and jumpered my old Seagate 40gbs disk as a slave. All alone, it worked. Then I set and jumpered the new disk (Seagate, 40gbs) as a master. The Bios detected them correctly, but I couldn't boot, because my computer started rebooting all the time. Ok, I booted from the diskette I had made with the software provided by the manufacturer (DiscWizard) and formatted the new drive. Then I used the same program to copy the old drive's contents into the new one. Now I am the mother of two identical twins.
Disk 0: D
Disk 1 vol. 1: C
Both are identified as primary and active by the Disk Manager (Win2k) and by Partition Magic 7 (sometimes we need a second opinion). I want one of them for storage purposes, and leave the other as it is.
How can I solve that?

[ski]

Disconnect the Slave HD, and see if the system boots up with just the Master connected.
If not, then disconnect the Master drive, reconnect the Slave drive, and jumper it as Master.
If that does not work, then make sure it's properly and securely connected.
If still no luck, then make sure it's being recognized in BIOS.

If it works, then jumper the other HD as Slave, format it , and use it for storage.

[yolagp]

Thank you, ski. It couldn't boot with the master alone, so I booted with the slave, re-installed the master, and set it to be the bootable disk. Then I re-formatted the slave for storage, and now it works fine. Thanks!

[Paul Komski]

These problems arise because of the way that Win2K and WinXP "remember" the partition information made at the time of the original install. All volumes EXCEPT the 2K/XP boot partition can be re-assigned another drive letter. This information is stored both in the registry (for MountManager) and on the physical drive itself (for LogicalDiskManager). The only way to change the assigned 2K/XP drive letter is to hack the registry - and this nearly always results in tears.

When you made the old master the slave, on its own, there would be no conflicts and the only active bootable partition would boot OK. Once the new drive was added as master, the system would expect to find a bootable-partition/boot.ini file on the master's first partition and the bootup would fail.

It is unclear whether both HDD's have a single partition containing Win2K on them but there is bound to be some conflict, since both the original and the clone will have retained the SAME drive letter to want to use when booted as Win2K/XP.

Was the original 2K on C: or on D:?? Whatever, it is essential to either clone all the partitions or, if you have only cloned the 2K/XP partition, to reinstate it into EXACTLY the same partition that existed AT THE TIME of the original installation of Win2k/XP. Failure to do so will result either in a boot-up loop or there will be a message saying there is no paging-file or the paging-file is too small (even though this is not literally true).

It's a confusing area, so an example might help explain. After setting-up C, D and E partitions on a HDD, Win98 is installed on to C and Win2K is installed on to E. After installation, a clone of just the E partition is made on backup media. At a later stage the D partition is deleted. Then the E (Win2K) partiton goes bad and and so the clone of E is reinstated. BUT, because there are now only two partions on the drive it is impossible to boot into the restored Win2K because it still calls itself E (the original) but finds itself on the second, D, partition. The cure is to create a new D partition (if only temporarily) and restore the clone into the third partition, since now the geometry matches the original install.

The thing to write down (if you intend to make clones) at the time of a Win2K/XP installation is the exact geometry of all volumes existing at that time (and particularly the drive letter assigned to the Win2K/XP partition) if one is going to image a drive or otherwise make a clone - so that this can be remembered, when restoration is required. This gets even more complicated if page-files exist on partitions that are distant from the NT OS.

[yolagp]

Wow! That's exactly what happened: when I tried to boot with the master alone (the copy) it said that it had no paging file or that it was too small (it was true, though: the size was 0, but when I assigned more space to it nothing happened), and when I tried to boot with both drives it kept rebooting eternally. The only way it would work, though, was to make the new drive bootable by itself, and later format the other one. Seems like it wouldn't take a slave and a master if the master didn't have the lead...just like real life...:rolleyes:

[Sylvander]

Wow! Paul.

My brain cells went cross eyed trying to comprehend what I think you meant.

Could you suggest some reading matter on the web that would impart some understanding at a speed I can handle?
Or e-mail me some info?

[Paul Komski]

He he: I'm not so think as I drunk I am.

Most of the stuff is in MSKB articles and that can lead on to a bit of Googling. Reading it is one thing - understanding it is another. Once it happens to you though, it becomes important to get one's head round it.

These for starters then:-

How Windows 2000 Assigns, Reserves, and Stores Drive Letters (MSKB-234048) (http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;234048)

How to: Change Drive Letter Assignments in Windows XP (MSKB-307844) (http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;307844)

Dynamic vs. Basic Storage in Windows 2000 (MSKB-314343) (http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;314343)

Designate Your Own Drive Letters (annoyances.org) (http://www.annoyances.org/exec/show/article02-024)

My own particular problems arose after (a) deleting a couple of logical partitions on a master HDD and also (b) after adding a slave HDD. This led to "Ghost" drives appearing amongst the logical ones and also did not allow me to access a restored Win2K partition using DriveImage. The image was restored but the drive was inaccesible.

Another related problem can arise with partitions on certain "removable drives" (say some USB HDDs) following a clean install of Win2K/XP. When the removable drive comes back on line by being connected, its partitions may not be picked-up by the clean installation as they were with the old installation. The logic behind this is that the new installation may only read in the first primary partition on such drives and not see any logical ones during boot-up; partitions which could have been created from within the old XP OS and thereby were visible at the time. Many manufacturers of such drives do not "support" partitioning them, although this can be done, so maybe that is the reason why.

Have spent a lot of time over the past couple of weeks experimenting with installs and restores in different configurations. Don't know all the answers but if you have any specific questions I'll do the best I can to answer them.

The critical thing to remember is to make note of what the exact partition structure/geometry at both install time and at the time you decide to make an image or clone containing a Win2K/XP OS.