Vista bootloader on another hardrive :/

[MumboJumbo]

Hey well ive had this problem for some time but now I really need the space of my other hard drive.

Basically I have vista installed on a 320gb hard drive. I got a new 750GB hard drive and I installed vista onto it while i was already in the vista os on the 320gb hard drive because doing it from boot up crashed for some reason.

Now I cannot boot from the 750GB hard drive without the 320gb hard drive being the primary boot drive. But i want to format my 320GB hard drive, this will mean i cant boot at all I would imagine.

What can i do to fix this as I don't want to format the 750GB hard drive.

 

[Van Diemen]

Could have used Acronis or Partition Magic 8 to clone your 320 to the 750.

Options:
1) Unplug the 320 boot up with the Vista DVD and run a repair (I think that's what it's called)

2) You could use PM8 to make the 750 active and see if that works



Note: these are just my suggestions, neber used them myself, but I guess they should work

 

[Alex74]

Try grabbing EasyBCD and using this method: http://neosmart.net/wiki/display/EBCD/Changing+the+Vista+Boot+Drive

Hopefully a reasonably painless option (the example they use is XP and vista but it should be the same thing..), or alternatively might be able to use repair utilities in vista DVD as mentioned above..

 

[MeatLoaf]

I have the same rthing with Windows 7. Have vista on the primary 250Gb SATA drive and Win7 on a newer faster 500Gb. Im done with vista so wanted to remove the 250Gb drive and use it in an external box for backup. I suspect if i remove the 250Gb then win7 wont load from the new drive

 

[SpaghettiOs]

^

You should be fine. The bootloader normally stays on the drive with the most recent OS. If not, I hear the Windows 7 boot repair facility is pretty good.

 

[Van Diemen]

I have the same rthing with Windows 7. Have vista on the primary 250Gb SATA drive and Win7 on a newer faster 500Gb. Im done with vista so wanted to remove the 250Gb drive and use it in an external box for backup. I suspect if i remove the 250Gb then win7 wont load from the new drive

1) Unplug the 250 boot up with the Win7 DVD and run a repair

 

[Hairybudda]

Flatten the drive you want to flatten, switch it to be secondary, boot your vista dvd and go to the repair console and do a fixboot/fixmbr hey presto.

 

[samuria]

A lot of bios gets confused if there is 2 active partitions on the system and then wont boot but there isnt much software were you can set it inactive. to doit try this

Open up a command prompt and type DISKPART.

Type LIST DISK
Type SELECT DISK n (where n is the number )
Type LIST PARTITION
Type SELECT PARTITION n (where n is the number of the active partition you wish to make inactive)
Type INACTIVE
Type EXIT to exit DISKPART
Type EXIT again to exit the command prompt
Reboot