Boot problem w/ multiple hard drives

[Firemyst]

Hi there,

I have a W2K Server with two partitions: D and F. Let me emphasize THERE IS NO "C" PARTITION.

"D" contains the operating system.
"F" contains the website and everything associated with it.

Whenever we install a secondard hard drive (on an EIDE cable) as the slave, the machine boots up halfway, and then stops with an "INACCESSIBLE BOOT DEVICE" error.

The server runs fine with the single HD. The moment we add a second HD (any HD), we receive the error and can't boot the server.

I'm assuming this is because whenever we add a second drive, it recognizes it as "C". There is no bios setting to give letters to drive. We have the drive containing "D" set as the boot device, active partition, and marked as master with the jumpers (not cable select).

Does anyone have any idea on what the problem is and/or how to correct it (other than trying to remake the "D" partition to "C" and doing a complete search/replace in the registry)?

Thanks!

 

[mattjurado]

Just a question, why is there no c partition? Who made it D?

Matt J.

 

[Firemyst]

There is no "C" because the current drive used to be the backup (it was the "D" partition when the "C" partition was working). The drive which had the "C" partition completely died.

We moved the backup "D" to be the master because we needed the machine back up right away.

We've since gotten more hard drives. Problem is, we can't install them on this machine now.

 

[Borca]

Since your W2k Server still in working order, 1st step is to ghost(Norton) your Hard drive.
Was your new hard drive installed on the Primary IDE cable or Secondary IDE cable?
Try connecting your new HDD on the Secondary IDE cable
and set as Slave with the CD-ROM Drvie set as Master.

 

[allenEd]

You need to check your boot.ini file , pls tell me what this file says. It may be hiden from view...This file tells window which drive and partitian to boot from..

 

[Firemyst]

To answer questions (a complete copy of my boot.ini file is below) :

1) Both hard drives have always been on the primary IDE channel. My secondary IDE channel has a DVD-ROM and CD-RW drive as the master and slave respectively. the hard drive that's working has been in both the "master" and "slave" position on the primary IDE channel.

2) allenEd: here's my boot.ini file:

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WinNT="Windows 2000 Server" /fastdetect

If I put the other hard drive in, and change the rdisk(0) to rdisk(1), it still does not work.

Thanks! Any help or insight appreciated!

 

[raquetman75]

Try this:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;Q223188

 

[Firemyst]

I can't do this, because if I change the boot drive to "C", then that means EVERY entry in the registry will be incorrect, and nothing will work -- the security, programs, paths, installations, etc. Also, none of the program configurations and ".ini" files will work either.

Unless you have a nifty search/replace program that'll go through the registry and do all this?