Booting from OLD hard drive?

Question

Hi,   There has got to be an easy solution to this but I'm having no luck.   Here's what I did:   I installed a new SATA hard drive and left my old drive in place. Due to some problems using the new SATA drive (Office wouldn't work properly, etc) I would like to return to booting with my OLD hard drive and just use the new SATA one for storage. I know how to manually do this (F12 everytime I start the computer) but want to have it boot to the old hard drive automatically.   How do I do this?   Any help would be appreciated! Thank you.

Syed Nizamuddin · Answer

If you can specify the system model that would be great. But generally we have to go to BIOS by pressing 'F2' for the new systems and 'DEL' for the old systems. We can go to BIOS and change the boot sequence and then save changes and exit and the system will boot from old hard drive.

kittyrat1 · Answer

It is an XPS and it says on the Owner's Manual model WHL. It is one of the older XPS models and was purchased in 8/03. It has Bios version A03.

In the Bios, here is what is listed in the Drive Configuration:

SATA Primary Drive - Hard Drive
SATA Secondary Drive -Off
Primary Master Drive-Hard Drive
Primary Slave Drive-Off
Secondary Master Drive-CD-Rom
Secondary Slave Drive-CD-Rom
Ide Drive UDMA-On

In the Boot Sequence, Hard Drive C (SATA Drive) is listed as #1.

The problem is that the new drive (SATA) is assigned C, and I want to boot from the old drive which is now listed as G.

I used some software from Seagate (SATA drive) to copy files onto it from my old drive and things didn't go so well. Office no longer functions properly is the main problem. Have tried to reinstall Office but it doesn't work. Won't even let me remove Office. Some kind of installer issue from the research I've done. Anyway, Office still functions properly from the old drive on G, so I thought I'd go back to booting from G and just use the new SATA drive for media storage.

Syed Nizamuddin · Answer

Could you please mention the service tag?

kittyrat1 · Answer

Will add, here is exactly how my Boot Sequence looks like:

1. Hard-Disk Drive C
2. IDE CD-Rom
3. Integrated NIC
4. Diskette Drive
5. BEV Device (not installed)

Message Edited by kittyrat1 on 05-18-200608:54 AM

Majestic · Answer

@Syed Nizamuddin wrote: Could you please mention the service tag? Just for future reference the Dell Moderators frown on the asking of a Service Tag number due to privacy concerns.

Syed Nizamuddin · Answer

Make sure you back up all the data before you try this. Hope this link help you http://support.microsoft.com/kb/249321/   http://support.microsoft.com/kb/223188/

Syed Nizamuddin · Answer

Hi Majestic, Thank you for the information.

Majestic · Answer

Kittyrat, unlike some of the older Dell systems, the XPS model doesn't allow you to individually assign which hard drive to boot from.  With your model, the system will always look for bootable SATA hard drive before it considers booting from an PATA IDE hard drive.

kittyrat1 · Answer

So basically there is not a way to do this. Just my luck. Thank you for the help though!

BubBowen · Answer

But, If your SATA drives don't have any bootable partitions, won't it skip to the IDE one if it does have a Bootable Partition? Not sure, but sounds feasible. Good luck! Bub

Storage, Drives & Media

Booting from OLD hard drive?

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