How To Set Up Drive As "Boot" Drive

[RKeaton]

What do I need to do to set up a drive as the boot drive?

I made some hardware changes recently and things got a little screwy. I bought a new hard drive and installed Windows (Vista) on it but it the computer won't boot when it is the only drive that's plugged in. I had to plug the old drive as well just to get the system to boot.

It's weird because once it boots up it asks me to select the operating system I want to use (from two identical choices of Windows Vista) and depending on which one I select I will either run the old or new hard drive. So the new one works just fine - I just can't boot from it. How to fix this?

 

[A True Folder]

Are they IDE drives?

If so how are the jumpers set, sounds like your old drive has the jumper set to Master and your new drive is set to slave (or cable select and it is on the wrong plug)

 

[RKeaton]

The old one is old, so ya I think it's an IDE drive. Big fat data cable and whatnot? I didn't know to check the jumpers. The new one is the new style - SATA? So I don't think it has a jumper, is that right?

So should I just switch the jumper on the old drive to slave and that's it or do I need to make other changes?

 

[A True Folder]

Was the old drive plugged in when you installed Vista on the new drive?

It sounds like it was and the boot sector is on the old drive.

 

[Atomic Rooster]

You need to enter the BIOS and set the new SATA drive as the first drive in the boot order.

When you have a mix of SATA and IDE drives, you don't need to worry about the jumper on the IDE drive as it will still need to be set as master on the IDE channel.