Thinkpads Forum

If I have an OS installed on both the internal and the expansion bay drive, can I chose which to boot off of?

I really want to be able to do this.

If by expansion bay drive, you mean the Ultrabay with a 2nd HDD adapter and HDD in it, then you should be able to. I do a triple boot off of my T43 like that and it works fine...I imagine it works that way on the T60 as well. Simply hit F12 during the BIOS splash screen stage of boot up and select the drive.

christopher_wolf wrote:If by expansion bay drive, you mean the Ultrabay with a 2nd HDD adapter and HDD in it, then you should be able to. I do a triple boot off of my T43 like that and it works fine...I imagine it works that way on the T60 as well. Simply hit F12 during the BIOS splash screen stage of boot up and select the drive.

Wow that is awesome. I wonder if this is possible on my T41p? I was once told on this forum I could not do that. Guess they were wrong.

Still probably takes a bit longer to go through the BIOS but there is no other way, and hey, I am not complaining. Many thanks!

I have dual drives. On start up you can configure which drive to boot from. You would need an OS on both though.

ThinkPad wrote:I have dual drives. On start up you can configure which drive to boot from. You would need an OS on both though.

Yeah well that part I thought was obvious Thanks for the extra clarification though. I look forward to getting this working finally.

You can indeed do that; in fact, there is even a way to get it to boot-preferentially without having to mess with the boot order permanently or even manually per boot.

dxben wrote:

ThinkPad wrote:I have dual drives. On start up you can configure which drive to boot from. You would need an OS on both though.

Yeah well that part I thought was obvious Thanks for the extra clarification though.

christopher_wolf wrote:You can indeed do that; in fact, there is even a way to get it to boot-preferentially without having to mess with the boot order permanently or even manually per boot.

I would like to know how this is done. As I have an interest in installing a second hard drive in the ultrabay for this purpose.

You mention a triple boot on your T43....sounds great, better yet.

Any instructions would be appreciated.

Thanks
Archer

If you installed the second drive in a tray put into the Ultrabay, you could select it from the boot menu using F12 and boot to it directly without having to change anything around on the system. Just make sure that the first time you insert it into the system that you add it to the boot list under startup sequence in the Bios and go from there. We do it here frequently for test purposes.

Regards.

MG.

You can certainly boot off either drive (I have done that on my T41). With the advent of SP2 for XP, I could not boot the same license - one license would bash the other. I used to use this concept to start a new machine, gradually build it over time, and use the original image as the working machine until I was done. Up to SP1, it worked fine. With SP2, I had issues.

Obviously, with two different OS's or two different licenses, it works fine. ... JD Hurst

What is the best way to get an OS on that second hard drive?

I simply pulled the first drive out from the primary slot, installed the second and loaded my image on there fresh. Once it was all updated and done, I put the initial drive back in and popped the second one into the drive tray.

Regards.

MG.

MobileGuru wrote:I simply pulled the first drive out from the primary slot, installed the second and loaded my image on there fresh.

Once you moved the drives, does it boot from the blank drive or did you boot from the first drive in the ultra bay slot? And then load the OS on the drive in the main bay?[/quote]

MobileGuru wrote:Once it was all updated and done, I put the initial drive back in and popped the second one into the drive tray.

So, then with each drive in their respective location does it boot by default to the main drive, or do you use F12 to choose each time?
Regards.
MG.[/quote]

Thanks again for you quick response and help, as I already have the drive and the ultrabay slim adapter. Eroneously Lenovo states that the Ultra Slim Bay adapter comes with instructions which mine did not.

All the best,
Archer