[videobruce]

Can I have 2 bootable drives (selectable) running 2k?
I use a toggle switch (DPDT) with a cut down ATA connector to fit in the 6 pin space for the master/slave jumpers. (Works great in 98SE/ME, done it with 4 other computers!)

[Dirty Harry]

What are you referring to? Switching the master slave setting doesn't change the boot drive, does it ?

Personally I use the bios as a boot manager, switching IDE channel there switches the boot drive as they are on separate cables. Most of the time I have W2K on both drives and this works just fine.

H.

[videobruce]

When I throw the switch the other drive becomes the boot drive.
I can't hide the drive in the Bios, I don't have a Promise or Highpoint controller as I assume you have judging by what you say you can do.

[Dirty Harry]

Interesting approach, never thought of using the master-slave switch to switch boot order.

Yes, I have a Highpoint controller (onboard Abit KG7), but it worked just as well before. The bios lets you choose were to boot from (IDE 1 or 2, for example). As long as you have the HD's on different controllers = cables this works fine.

You cannot hide a drive from bios, windows overrides this setting (a bit like the power saving settings in bios/windows). I don't know for sure, but maybe you could put in wrong info for heads/cyls etc in bios and the drive would perhaps be unreadable. Try it if you want, but its not that good an idea to mess with the physical drive properties.

Why do you need to hide a disk? In the rare cases when you really need to be that sure that nothing can touch a drive I'd suggest you just pull the power or IDE cable. I can't think of any other situation than when you are installing a new and unknown OS, that might have its own idea on where to write what.

H.

[videobruce]

The switch works great, costs little, just have to do a little surgery on a IDE connector/cable, a little soldering and dril a access hole in the bezel of the case if you want the switch up front (I use Enlight cases).

My bios doesn't have a boot order drive option, at least I never saw it. I will look thou. (Award V6, Kt-133 chipset)

I have had trouble with 2 bootable drives (1 active partition on each and with a duplicate O/S on the other drive) before. Data coruption of the other drive installing 2k. Part went to one drive and part went to another or at least was installed in both durning the process. Anyways it corupted the other drive.
Yes I know to disconnect the other drive, which is what I've been doing but that is a pain.
What's the sense of having the ability to disable a drive in the bios when it doesn't work, at least with 2k? It always worked with 98 and ME by the way!

[Dirty Harry]

Hmm, I've been dual booting thru bios for years and only once did I have a problem, I think it was a Linux distro or some other crap that wrote to the wrong HD. As I do take frequent images of the system drive (especially before toying with crap) it was five minutes to restore.

Honestly, I can't imagine a bios that doesn't let you choose channel to boot from. My Abit and Asus boards have all had this option and they use the award bios too. But who knows, please confirm if your mobo doesn't have it.

The bios is not made by MS you know, maybe other OS's let you hide drives.

H.

[videobruce]

98SE and ME on 2 different M/B's have let me hide the drive. Only 2k hasn't!!

[ViperZ2000]

How are you wanting to hide the drives? If you do a dual boot you can use a regkey called NoDrives and set the value to only the ones you want to be seen. Check out http://www.winguides.com/registry/display.php/148/

Basically just add together the numerical value of each drive letter and use that value.

A = 1
B = 2
C = 4
D = 8
E = 16
F = 32
G = 64
H = 128
I = 256 etc


So if you want to hide the D: drive, add A+B+C+E (leave out the values for the drive(s) you wish to hide) and so on and it will only show in Explorer and My Computer the drives you want.

I actually had a quad boot with (4) primary partitions on 1 drive with Win2000 Pro. I got tired of screwing up my gaming partition, app partition, etc, so I basically left 15 GB per partition and once the first install was done, I rebooted again with the CD and install again on the second partition, and so on.

Once you are done, you can edit the boot.ini file on the c: partition and rename each one of the OS' descriptions to whatever you like:

[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Win2000 - Games" /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS="Win2000 - Apps" /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(3)\WINDOWS="Win2000 - Demos" /fastdetect

One word of advice: If you plan to dual boot with 9x or ME, be sure to install these Op Systems *FIRST* so that 2000 or XP can add them into it's boot manager.

[videobruce]

I really want to hide the drive(s) BEFORE I load any O/S!
Other than having a controller card/chip, who can you do it in the bios without disconnecting the cable?

[Dirty Harry]

No, if you don't put them on different channels/cables and your bios lets you select boot channel. The setting is in your bios, believe me, go to Advanced Bios Features and there you'll see First boot device, Second boot device etc. There you'll be able to choose between booting from HDD-0 or HDD-1 among other things.

Another idea; if you set the other harddrive to NONE in the bios (as opposed to auto) it is in under IDE primary master etc) then it shouldn't be visible to Windows. You still must have the disks on separate cables though.

Third option, as you have used the switch route before, why don't you solder a switch on the power cord to the drive ?

H.

[videobruce]

Yes my M/B does have the ability to switch the drive boot order, but the other drive is still there. It's not a issue of which is the bootable drive, that isn't a problem, the switch take care of that, I don't want the drive visable at all because of possible data corruption durning the O/S instalation! As far as putting a switch to power the drive off, I don't trust because the data cable is still there and everything still sees it connected. I think that would only cause other problems.
Yea, I know just disconnect the cable, but that is a pain (ok I'm lazy, but what is the sense of having settings that don't work?)

Epox 8-KTA (KT-133 chipset)

[Dirty Harry]

Heh, you were answering while I edited the post.

Once you have the drives on separate channels and use that to choose where you boot from you can set the "secondary master" to NONE in the CMOS setup screen. Normally this is on AUTO. Have you tried that ?

H.

[videobruce]

If I set it to none, it is still seen running 2k!

98 & ME did not have that problem.

[Dirty Harry]

They must be on different cables, otherwise the master will let the conf info from the slave through ! Are they ?