Possible to choose SCSI/IDE hard disk ?

[vbportal]

Hi,
I have a PIII PC with an Adaptec 29160 SCSI adapter connected to a 10GB SCSI hard disk and SCSI CD-ROM.
In the PC I also have a 40GB IDE hard disk.
The mother bord is an ASUS TUSL2-C.

I want to use the PC for SW development work and wanted if possible to have separate OS and software installations on the SCSI and IDE hard disks and choose which hard disk i.e. which SW development environment I wanted to use (without using bootloaders i.e. somehow to turn off either hard disk). Is this possible and how (in the bios I can turn off the IDE drive, but I'm not sure how to turn off the SCSI drive - whatever I tried, Windows XP (installed on the 40GB IDE) always sees the SCSI drive) ?

Best regards,Vjeko

 

[BernardStewart]

I have two IDE drives and a RAID 5 contoller with 4 drives.
XP is installed on them all so providing multi-boot.
I installed 'Recovery Console to provide the boot menue.
You then need to use the Recovery console boot option at start up and use the bootcfg /rebuild coomand - see below.

To install the Recovery Console as a startup option
With Windows running, insert the Setup CD into your CD-ROM drive.
CLick Start and select Run.
Type the following where D: is the CD-ROM drive letter:
D:\i386\winnt32.exe /cmdcons

Follow the instructions on the screen.
Notes

To run the Recovery Console, restart your computer and select the Recovery Console option from the list of available operating systems.
You must be logged on as an administrator or a member of the Administrators group in order to complete this procedure. If your computer is connected to a network, network policy settings may also prevent you from completing this procedure.
To see the commands available on the Recovery Console, type help at the at the console prompt.
If your computer will not start, you can run the Recovery Console from the Setup CD. See Related Topics for information on running the Recovery Console when your computer will not start.

overviewIf safe mode and other startup options do not work, you can consider using the Recovery Console. This method is recommended only if you are an advanced user who can use basic commands to identify and locate problem drivers and files. In addition, you must be an administrator to use the Recovery Console.

Using the Recovery Console, you can enable and disable services, format drives, read and write data on a local drive (including drives formatted to use NTFS), and perform many other administrative tasks. The Recovery Console is particularly useful if you need to repair your system by copying a file from a floppy disk or CD-ROM to your hard drive, or if you need to reconfigure a service that is preventing your computer from starting properly.

There are two ways to start the Recovery Console:

If you are unable to start your computer, you can run the Recovery Console from your Setup CD.
As an alternative, you can install the Recovery Console on your computer to make it available in case you are unable to restart Windows. You can then select the Recovery Console option from the list of available operating systems on startup.
After you start the Recovery Console you will have to choose which installation you want to log on to (if you have a dual-boot or multiple-boot system) and you will have to log on with your administrator password.

The console provides commands you can use to do simple operations such as changing to a different directory or viewing a directory, and more powerful operations such as fixing the boot sector. You can access Help for the commands in the Recovery Console by typing help at the Recovery Console command prompt.

For information on starting and using the Recovery Console, see Related Topics.

Once you are running the Recovery Console, you can get help on the available commands by typing help at the command prompt.

BootcfgUse the bootcfg command for boot configuration and recovery (boot.ini for most computers).

The bootcfg command with the parameters listed below is only available when you are using the Recovery Console. The bootcfg command with different parameters is available from the command prompt.

Usage:

bootcfg /default

Set the default boot entry.

bootcfg /add

Add a Windows installation to the boot list.
bootcfg /rebuild

Iterate through all Windows installations and allow the user to choose which to add.

 

[vbportal]

Hi,
thanks for the info but that's not exactly what I was after. I have a commercial boot manager and could install that if I wanted and I don't use windos recovery mechanisms but an imaging scheme/commercial software.

What I was after was the possibility of somehow using the SCSI Hard drive and IDE hard drive (this is in a removable tray) independantly i.e. not combined via some boot manager / each drive would have its own OS or boot manager/multi OS setup - or one of them could be just for data.

I can turn off the IDE drive in bios and it won't be visible - can I turn off the SCSI drive in some way ?

 

[tf1]

It probably isn't the best way to do this but depending on your motherboard/bios, you should be able to go into BIOS and change the boot order.

You can also disable the IDE channel(s) in BIOS to leave your SCSI only visible to the OS, plus you can disable the SCSI channel in the Adaptec SCSI manager.

I hope you aren't planning to change to frequently because it will quickly become a tedious task.

Regards: tf1

 

[vbportal]

Hi tf1,
Not sure if I understood you right - do you mean that
I can bootup from the IDE drive (Windows XP)and make the SCSI hardware (SCSI drive and CD-ROM) invisible to that OS by switching off the SCSI channel ?

If yes, then I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong - I've tried quite a few things in the SCSI bios and when I boot up off the IDE drive, the SCSI drive is always visible and active.

What I'm trying to do (if possible) is effectively being able to use the IDE and SCSI drives independantly for different OSs (not wanting to introduce bootmanagers / visibility across drives and trying to do it without a removable SCSI drive if possible to avoid any extra costs now)

BR,Vjeko

 

[bcastner]

You can create two installations of XP. It escapes me why the drives need to be invisible. But you can do that too through Group Policy:

http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=231289