migrated from dual boot IDE to dual boot SATA

[multarnc]

Here is my problem:
I started on a dual boot IDE system. 15Gig on Primary Master and 160Gig in two partitions on Primary Slave. I had it set up so that I can boot into either if one is disconnected, or I get a menu from the 15Gig when both are connected. I have Win2k on both disks.
I bought two 80Gig Maxtor SATA harddrives and used Maxblast 4 to clone the 15Gb disk to the first 80Gb SATA and the same to clone the system partition of the 160Gb IDE to the 2nd 80Gb SATA drive. Each 80Gb drive was partitioned into two 40Gb partitions.
I then changed the BIOS to boot from the SATA drive. It defaults to the first SATA channel which contained the same data as the boot drive in the old IDE configuration.
I still got the boot menu and could boot into the 1st drive without a problem. I could even disconnect either drive and boot into both by the themselves. But with both connected and using the boot menu to access the second disk, it goes through the black Win2k boot screen and then I get a blue screen with the error "Inaccessbile Boot Device". If I disconnect the first drive and boot to the second by itself, it works. I didn't change any of the Boot.ini configurations b/c when the boot order is changed in the BIOS, the SATA controller should assume the position the IDE controller had so the settings in the boot.ini file would not change.
I can't figure out why it won't boot into the second harddrive. Any help would be greatly appreciated!

System specs:
A7V-600 Mobo w/AMD XP 3200 processor
1.5G PC2700 RAM
Chaintech Geforce FX 5700
2 Maxtor 80Gb SATA 150mbps harddrives
Emu 1820m sound system

 

[Capricorn]

My Win2K experience is a little rusty, so forgive me if I don't get the names just right, but one thing comes to mind. Check the boot.ini file on your first boot disk and make sure the names it's using still match what W2K says the device names are for the new SATA drives. The numbers and/or the names may have changed. You have definitely changed drive channels (presuming there's still PATA connectors available, too.)

There's also some limit to where a boot partition can start on the drive, but since you have them as the first paritition for two physically different disks, I can't see that being it.

 

[multarnc]

The device names go by the boot order.
In the boot.ini on the first drive, it is like this:
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1) First HD
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1) Second HD

The controller number is set by the boot order. If the boot order is SATA then IDE, the SATA should be disk(0) and IDE is disk(1).
When it was only IDE and the SATA was disabled, it was disk(0). So that shouldn't have changed.
The boot.ini I have tried both rdisk(0) and rdisk(1). It should be set to rdisk(0) so it can boot if the first HD is unplugged. It worked fine that way when both drives were IDE.
I did notice that when I went into the Recover Console, the two OSes were listed as:
C:WINNT
I:WINNT

When they were IDE, they were listed as:
C:WINNT
D:WINNT

Under my current configuration, in the first OS, the drives are listed this way:
C, D (both partitions on the first SATA HD)
E, F (two CDROMs)
G, H (the original second IDE HD 160Gb)
I, J (the second SATA HD partitions)

Could it have something to do with the way it is associating the root partition on the second HD with I? I wouldn't think that would matter.

The IDE controllers are still there. My two CD-ROMS have been moved to Primary IDE controller.

I would think the boot.ini is pointing correctly b/c I messed with the disk number and rdisk number just to see what would happen and I got the black screen that says that is pointed to a device that doesn't exist. So the fact that I am getting a Windows error shows that it is actually going to the second installation on boot, but not getting any further than that.

 

[Capricorn]

Well, it would hurt anything to edit the second disk to 6 from 1 and see what happens, but I agree that it shouldn't make a difference. Something like:

multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(6)partition(1) Second HD

What I was really thinking is that it might need to be something like

multi(2)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1) First HD
multi(2)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1) Second HD

if you had *not* changed the boot order in BIOS.

Sounds like you have a pretty good idea where to be looking. You might try to disable the IDE all together for a test to see what happens as well.

 

[multarnc]

Well, it would hurt anything to edit the second disk to 6 from 1 and see what happens, but I agree that it shouldn't make a difference. Something like:

multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(6)partition(1) Second HD

What I was really thinking is that it might need to be something like

multi(2)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1) First HD
multi(2)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1) Second HD

if you had *not* changed the boot order in BIOS.

Sounds like you have a pretty good idea where to be looking. You might try to disable the IDE all together for a test to see what happens as well.

multi as far as I know never changes from 0.
I'm going to try a couple more things when I get off of work. I'm going to try to boot to the just the second drive again with the first one disconnected. If that doesn't work, I'll try reimaging just that disk. If that doesn't work, I'll see if I can use the original 160Gb drive on IDE and get it to dual-boot into that one instead of the second SATA. If all of those fail, I think I'm just going to give up, lol.

EDIT: After doing a little more research, I think you may be onto something with changing rdisk to 6, except it would be 4. If multi is used, disk is always 0, so all disks, no matter what controller are in the order that they are connected. I think they're ordered like this:

SATA channel 1
IDE PM
IDE PS
IDE SM
IDE SL
USB
SATA channel 2

This makes sense b/c normally SATA is ordered after IDE, but being that I have it set to boot from SATA(which is always the first channel) SATA Channel 1 is moved to the top of the ordering.
It makes sense that Recovery Console is seeing the second harddrive as I b/c there are two partitions on SATA Channel 1(C,D), two IDE CDROM drives(E,F), two partitions on my external USB drive (G,H), two partitions on the SATA Channel 2 drive (I,J).
So that is 5 devices:
SATA Channel 1 = rdisk(0)partition(1,2)
DVD burner = rdisk(1)
CD burner = rdisk(2)
USB drive = rdisk(3)paritition(1,2)
SATA Channel 2 = rdisk(4)partition(1,2)

I'm not sure if CD-ROMs are assigned rdisk numbers. If not, then the rdisk number will be 2. I'll try both and see if they work.

 

[multarnc]

I tried changing the rdisk number. I tried 3-6. None of them worked. I got a black screen saying there is nothing to boot to each time.
So I re-copied the 160Gb primary partition to the second SATA hd again. I disconnected both CD-ROMs and my USB drive to eliminate any variables. I set the second line in the boot.ini to boot to multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1) and this is what happened.
I was able to boot to the second harddrive and login. It logged in, but didn't load any startup programs. I checked my drive layout. It set the 1st partition on the first SATA drive as C: and the 2nd partition on the first SATA as D: and the second harddrive to G: and H:. It loaded the registry on the second SATA drive, on G. But obviously all of the pointers in the registry are pointing to C and D. So nothing else loaded. When I first booted into it, there was no user rights on C, so that is why nothing loaded from the C, since some of the programs on both OSes are the same.
So I rebooted and tried to boot back into the first SATA hd, and I get a blue screen saying basically that the registry is screwed. So in the process of booting to the second drive, it did something to the registry on the first one on C:. What I don't understand, is that in dual boot IDE, whatever HD you boot into automatically sets it's partitions as C and D. It's not the case with SATA. They are hard-set it seems. It doesn't automatically set the boot parition to C if you're booting to a second SATA drive.
I noticed in the disk manager in the second OS that the C drive(first parition on the first drive) is labeled as "Systemdrive" and G(which is the first partition on the second drive, which should have been changed to C since I booted into it is labeled as "boot".
None of this makes any sense to me since they were cloned from IDE drives that were set up the same way, and they worked. Even if I switch the channels, it still boots from the original first harddrive, even though it has been moved to the second channel, b/c I get the boot.ini of that drive.
This is really bugging. I need some help on this!