Re: Issues with external hard drives

First of all, let me apologise for a confusing description of my problem,
and thank you all for your suggestions, which I will follow up carefully.
For the record, this is what I did:

(A) Normal operation:
EIDE Master : Disk1 (with boot partition)
EIDE Slave: Disk 2.
Ext USB2 : empty

(B) Clone disk1 (boot partition only) to disk3:
EIDE Master : Disk1 (with boot partition)
EIDE Slave: Disk 2.
Ext USB2 : Disk3 (new 160GB EIDE in ext enclosure)
Here, I just cloned the boot partition from Disk1 to Disk3 using
Partition Magic (v8 this time)

(B) Test that disk3 is bootable:
EIDE Master : Disk3 (now has boot partition)
EIDE Slave: Disk 2.
Ext USB2 : empty
This works just like (A).

(C) Clone disk3 (boot partition only) to disk 2.
EIDE Master : Disk1 (with boot partition)
EIDE Slave: Disk 2.
Ext USB2 : Disk3 (with boot partition)
I could have gone direct from Disk1 to Disk2, but this way is faster.
Later, I did try the direct approach, with the same result D).

(D) Test that disk2 is bootable (this fails):
EIDE Master : Disk2 (now has boot partition)
EIDE Slave: empty.
Ext USB2 : empty
Boots part-way then hangs (just after the small windows logo is
displayed)

(E) Clone disk1 in ext drive this time (boot partition only) to disk 2.
EIDE Master : Disk3 (with boot partition)
EIDE Slave: Disk 2.
Ext USB2 : Disk1 (with boot partition)
This also fails when configured as (D).

(F) Test disk2 alone (this fails too):
EIDE Master : Disk2 (now has boot partition)

Some other points:
All drives are housed in removable caddies.
After cloning a boot partition, I always check that the new partition is set
to "Active".
I CAN boot from the original master (disk1) when it is the only disk
present.

I think that the above should answer the questions that were raised in your
posts (for which I am very grateful). I had not considered the boot.ini and
related issues, so I will try the booting from my windows CD and see if I
can get any further using the recovery console.

Many thanks,

Pete K


.

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