[Disk boot failure when removing one of two hard drives]

I have 2 HDDs: a big one containing the system and everything, and a small one which has nothing on it. but when I remove the small one for some reason it cant boot no more, it says "DISK BOOT FAILURE, INSERT SYSTEM DISK AND PRESS ENTER "
can anyone help?

 

What operating system are you running? & what are the jumper settins on the back of the 2 drives?
Regards Jac

 

im running windows.
the small drive is ata and the big one is sata. and they dont have any jumpers on the back (set to default i guess)

 

I had a neighbor who had a remotely similar problem, but he was getting the same error. Have you checked the BIOS to ensure the drive(s) is/are listed?

What I found was he had been in BIOS and somehow removed the drive info from BIOS so it was searching the boot order and landing on the floppy.

Just a thought.

Mitch

 

Hi Jimmi,
Windows is a wide open field, Xp???, Vista???, 95,98, 98SE, ME, the list goes on!!!
I would expect atleast XP SP1 or maybe 98se?
Which drive was windows?? installed to originally, I am taking the assumption possibily the ata/ide? what is the largest drive, again I assume the Sata, have you cloned the original set-up disc to the larger drive?
A little bit more system info will help us all to help you!
click the "My System" link on my message & it will give you some idea
Regards
Jac

 

When you boot into Windows, on which drive is Windows installed? If is not on the C: drive and the small (ATA) drive is the C: drive, it will contain the boot files. The boot files will be on the C: drive, when you take it away, you take away the boot files.

Matt
PS An ATA HDD will have jumpers on it.

 

@Matt
I have a Sata & IDE on my system, after boot, C is my IDE not the SATA, boot is from the sata, had a major virus which some have got around, shame it was after I did a full reboot X 2
TTFN
Jac

 

thanks, i think matt's right, the C disk is on the ata drive, because it was there first, but the system is on D. didnt think it would be a problem when i installed it.
so I tried copying all the files from the C root to D (accept the system volume information folder) but it still doesnt work, nothing's changed.

PS: windows xp sp2
and yes, the ata drive has a jumper connected horisontally at top right (pins 1 and 3 i think). but that's the drive i want to take out.

 

You must write the boot strap code into the MBR and Volume Boot Record of the sata hdd. Boot from the XP cd and get into the recovery console (RC) and run FIXMBR and FIXBOOT. Remove the ata hdd first. You will also need to edit the boot.ini file with correct hdd info, or run correct RC command.

 

thanks ill try that