Change boot drive? 1

[serializer]

I have 2 drives. My OS on C and other bigger drive on F. In my bios the F: drive is set for boot. When I try to change to C: it gives me boot error. It seems like some files or settings on C: is missing - I would like to boot from C: and cut the dependency to F:

How can I do that?

Thanks!

 

[Nelviticus]

I believe that if you install Windows 7 to an unpartitioned drive it will create the 100MB partition itself, but if you choose an existing partition at the installation screen (or partition the drive yourself from there) it will install without the 100MB partition (see this post on the Engineering Windows 7 blog, under '24. Reserved System Partition naming').

I've also read of instances where it creates that 100MB partition on another drive, as has happened to serializer. No idea what logic it uses to decide this though - see this lengthy thread on answers.microsoft.com for several examples.

You probably could move this partition from the F: drive to the C: drive but it would be risky - I wouldn't bother unless you were thinking of getting rid of the F: drive though.

Your current set-up means that if either drive fails your system won't boot, so you're twice as likely to run into problems as most users. However drives don't fail often. If the F: drive dies you might be able to fix the system by booting from the Windows DVD and using the recovery console (unless you use BitLocker, in which case you'll be stuffed).

If you ever decide to reinstall Windows, then as Vacunita says it's a good idea to unplug all drives except the one you want it installed to. After everything is set up you can plug the other drive(s) back in.

Regards

Nelviticus

 

[goombawaho]

What bothers me, and I don't have enough experience with Windows 7 to say, is that people used to partition their drive into C: and D: with Windows on C: and D: left for data.

The reason being that it would be easy to take an image backup of just the windows installation and likewise to make a data backup of D: AND the windows installation could be reloaded without harming the data.

Now, if Windows 7 cannot be explicitly told where to put this system folder, it kind of throws a monkey wrench into the works.

 

[Nelviticus]

Well if you partition your drive in two and tell Windows to install to the first partition, it won't create the 100MB reserved system partition at all. It only does this if you install it to an unpartitioned drive and let it create its own partitions.

Nelviticus

 

[goombawaho]

Interesting.......

 

[micker377]

I recently had a "store bought" computer brought to me, with the O.S already installed on the SATA drive (as is normal). I put her old PATA drive in as a slave so she would keep all of her pictures, etc. The following week, I had to work on it because it was suddenly booting into her old PATA drive! I had to go into the BIOS, and specifically set her SATA as the boot drive! As long as the computer saw only one drive, it was happy! With two drives, it got confused!

 

[goombawaho]

That's a different issue though. That's caused by BOTH drives having a boot sector and an operating system and the PATA drive getting the first "look" for booting by default after it was attached.

 

[Freestone]

How to remove the Windows 7 "System Reserved" Partition:

http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/kb/article.php?id=409