Thinkpads Forum

Hello,

I have Windows 7 x64 installed on my internal hard drive. This weekend I put a second hard drive in my ultrabay, attached a USB CDrom and formatted my ultrabay hd it using Windows XP x64 disk and tried to boot. I thought I'd get an OS with a selection screen. Instead I was presented with: "Windows could not start because of a computer disk hardware configuration problem, could not read from selected boot disk, check boot path and disk hardware". I could alternatively boot into Windows XP, but not into Windows 7.

I realized this was not because of boot.ini, as Windows 7 does not use it. So I repaired my Windows 7 disk with BCD from the Windows 7 installation disk.

Now that I got Windows 7 to work again, when I force my BIOS to boot off of my second HD, now I cannot boot into Windows XP.

How am I supposed to install two OS's on two hard drives so that I can dual boot.

Keep in mind, I have no interest in dual booting from one hard drive that is partitioned. I have my reasons.

thesurg3on wrote:How am I supposed to install two OS's on two hard drives so that I can dual boot.

Here is the setup I use.
1) On my "Main" HD in the mainbay, I have Win XP Pro
2) On my "2nd" HD in the ultrabay, I run my other OS (Ubuntu, Win7 or whatever I want)

Here is how to set it up.

1) Remove the "Main" HD from the mainbay.
2) Install the "2nd" HD in the ultrabay
3) Connect your external USB Optical drive and install the OS on the ultrabay drive
4) Put the Mainbay drive back into the main slot

Now when booting up, if you do nothing it will boot to the mainbay.

Or when booting up you press the F12 key, it will bring up a boot menu, giving you a choice of which drive to boot into.

Then at anytime, you may remove the ultrabay drive to use an optical drive, or ultrabay battery without having to make any adjustments to the system.

Cheers...

So I can't have both drives in my machine and boot them and get a selection?

thesurg3on wrote:So I can't have both drives in my machine and boot them and get a selection?

Yes, you will have both drives in your machine at the same time.

You will notice that step 4) says to put the main drive back into the computer.

You will be able to choose which one you want to boot from by pressing F12 as I outlined above.
However if you want to boot to the mainbay drive you don't have to do anything just press power and it will boot as it did when new. The only time you must remove the main drive is during the installation of the "other OS" on the ultrabay drive. If you fail to remove the main drive while installing the second OS on the ultrabay drive it will write to the MBR of the main drive which is why you had the problems you did.

[/quote]Yes, you will have both drives in your machine at the same time.

You will notice that step 4) says to put the main drive back into the computer.

You will be able to choose which one you want to boot from by pressing F12 as I outlined above.
However if you want to boot to the mainbay drive you don't have to do anything just press power and it will boot as it did when new. The only time you must remove the main drive is during the installation of the "other OS" on the ultrabay drive. If you fail to remove the main drive while installing the second OS on the ultrabay drive it will write to the MBR of the main drive which is why you had the problems you did.[/quote]


I would like to do this too. so my question is this, what if i already have an OS (XP pro) on my second hard drive, do i need to remove the main drive and boot from the xp pro in ultrabay so that i can dual boot, or can just have both of them in there, main drive and ultrabay drive installed and press F12 or will that come up automatically? Would the ultrabay drive be hotswapple if it is in use? Not in use? should i purchase a usb optical drive? TIA

diaz1023 wrote:I would like to do this too. so my question is this, what if i already have an OS (XP pro) on my second hard drive, do i need to remove the main drive and boot from the xp pro in ultrabay so that i can dual boot, or can just have both of them in there, main drive and ultrabay drive installed and press F12 or will that come up automatically? Would the ultrabay drive be hotswapple if it is in use? Not in use? should i purchase a usb optical drive? TIA

I'm just a bit confused by your question. For clarification:

1) Do you currently have both the "main" HD in the mainbay _and_ a HD in the ultrabay?
2) If so, what OS is on the mainbay drive?
3) What OS is on the ultrabay drive?
4) Are you dual booting now?

No, the ultrabay drive is not hot-swappable.
You will note in my original instructions I said that one must press F12 to get a boot menu, it does not come up automatically.
What are you trying to accomplish? Do you want to have two drives with two different operating systems to choose from?

I apologize for the confusion. Here are the answers to the questions.

1. No, i am going to purchase the ultrabay adaptor soon
2. The main drive has Vista Business SP2
3. The drive that will go into the ultrabay is XP PRo, SP3
4. Not dual booting yet.

I would like to have two drives with different OS's to choose from.

TIA

diaz1023 wrote:I apologize for the confusion.

1. No, i am going to purchase the ultrabay adaptor soon
2. The main drive has Vista Business SP2
3. The drive that will go into the ultrabay is XP PRo, SP3
4. Not dual booting yet.

I would like to have two drives with different OS's to choose from.

No worries about the confusion...

It doesn't really matter what OS's are where, I just wanted to be sure I understood what you would like to accomplish so I would be clear in my instructions.

The original instructions I posted above apply to you too. However let me try and be a bit clearer.

First a general comment. What's of utmost importance is that the two hard drives _NOT_ be in the computer at the same time when installing the OS on the ultrabay drive. Thus in your case you would do this:

1) Remove the mainbay drive that has Vista on it now.
2) Install the 2nd hard drive into the adapter and into the ultrabay.
3) Connect your usb external optical drive and install the OS on the ultrabay hard drive.
4) Disconnect the usb drive and put away
5) Put the original Vista hard drive back into the mainbay. Now you have both hard drives in the computer.

Upon booting, press the F12 key and the boot menu will appear. Choose which drive you want to boot into.
(OR)
Upon booting if you do nothing, it will simply boot into the mainbay drive just as it did when you only had one hard drive in your ThinkPad.



* Now (not to confuse things) here is an _alternate way_ for those who may _not have_ a USB external optical drive *

1) Remove your original hard drive from the mainbay.
2) Install your 2nd hard drive into the mainbay. (the drive you will be using in the ultrabay).
3) Using your existing ultrabay optical drive, install the OS onto the 2nd hard drive which is presently in the mainbay.
4) Remove the 2nd drive from the mainbay and install it into the adapter and into the ultrabay.
5) Put your main hard drive back into the mainbay.

Boot instructions are the same.

Hopefully this makes things clear. If not, please ask. My goal is to make this easy for everyone.

Cheers...

One last question, the second harddrive already has the XP pro on it, would i have to reinstall the os or just place it in the bay and press F12 upon boot to load that OS? Once again thanks for clearing this up

By the way, thanks for the help. I did exactly what you prescribed and it worked as intended.

1. Removed my built-in Hard Drive which has my primary OS on it
2. Put my new HD in my ultrabay
3. Booted with USB CD-Rom
4. Installed OS
5. Shutdown
6. Put other harddrive in (both hard drives in place)
7. Booted
8. Selected F12, chose my boot device

Thanks.

just recieved my harddrive adapter from Brad, it works great!! i know have the two os's and i am a happy camper thanks to all for the help and advise

First, before reading forum, I was not removing 'main' HD while installing OS on ulrabay HD.
RESULT: Was not able to boot into ulrabay HD.

Second, after reading forum, I have done this:
1) Remove the "Main" HD from the mainbay.
2) Install the "2nd" HD in the ultrabay
3) Connect your external USB Optical drive and install the OS on the ultrabay drive
4) Put the Mainbay drive back into the main slot
RESULT: Ultrabay drive boots fine, BUT can't boot into "main"

In each scenario, I am able to explore the "other" drive from the drive I have booted to, but I can't boot from both drives.

I wonder if BIOS maintains some state and is aware of what is installed? The other option I can come up with is that the system to which I have booted, corrupts something while viewing "other" drive.

(I have T42)

dgerasim wrote:First, before reading forum, I was not removing 'main' HD while installing OS on ulrabay HD.
RESULT: Was not able to boot into ulrabay HD.

Second, after reading forum, I have done this:
1) Remove the "Main" HD from the mainbay.
2) Install the "2nd" HD in the ultrabay
3) Connect your external USB Optical drive and install the OS on the ultrabay drive
4) Put the Mainbay drive back into the main slot
RESULT: Ultrabay drive boots fine, BUT can't boot into "main"

In each scenario, I am able to explore the "other" drive from the drive I have booted to, but I can't boot from both drives.

I wonder if BIOS maintains some state and is aware of what is installed? The other option I can come up with is that the system to which I have booted, corrupts something while viewing "other" drive.

(I have T42)

I have a T42 and this is no problem. I press F12 at the beginning of the boot sequence to choose the Ultrabay drive, otherwise the Main Hard drive boots by default. If you remove the Ultrabay drive and the Main Hard drive won't boot, then you must have moved the boot loader to the Ultrabay drive from a previous install. You need to restore the bootloader on the Main Hard drive. To be safe, I would do this with the Ultrabay drive removed. How you restore the bootloader depends on which OS is (or OS's are) on the Main Hard drive.

1) Remove the "Main" HD from the mainbay.
2) Install the "2nd" HD in the ultrabay

For my T42p, I never need to remove the main HDD when installing OS on ultrabay driver. Tested with Windows XP and Windows 7.

Binh wrote:For my T42p, I never need to remove the main HDD when installing OS on ultrabay driver. Tested with Windows XP and Windows 7.

Now try removing the Windows 7 drive and XP probably won't boot. You can install a second OS on the Ultrabay drive, but it changes the bootloader in the main drive. If you remove the Ultrabay drive I don't think the main drive will boot. If you remove the main drive, you may run into problems as well. As long as both drives stay in the machine - no problem.

HIBERNATION and 2 drives ??

I have t42 and winXPsp2. I installed drives separately. Both are running fine and I can boot into etiher one.

Problem:
the ultrabay drive can't be configured via WinXP to go into hibernation - not supported. Why hibernation is not supported on ultrabay drive?

I have not tried swapping drives (main <-> unlrabay). I am concerned that after the swap, when the ultrabay drive goes into hiberanation it may store the state into MAIN drive and corrupt my MAIN install.

???

How do you boot the Ultrabay drive? Do you press F12 at the beginning of the boot sequence to get the BIOS boot menu?

I can do F12 - it works.
But I can also alter boot sequence so mashine will to try to boot from ultrabay first.

dgerasim wrote:I can do F12 - it works.
But I can also alter boot sequence so mashine will to try to boot from ultrabay first.

There will be no problem swapping the drives in your setup (main to ultrabay and vice versa). I do it all the time. In your present setup, whichever drive boots should be drive C:.

The only time this is a problem is when you use a boot manager (such as Windows Boot Manager or GRUB) to boot the ultrabay drive. In this case you do not want to swap the drives between the main hard drive slot and the ultrabay.

Update1:
- for some reason hibernation is now allowed on my unltabay drive

Update2:
- i tried hibernation on both drives w/o removing them from the mashine

There is definitely a problem with HIBERNATION. If hibernation is enabled on both drives and they run at the same time (you put them into hibernation) WINDOWS gets confused and will write the state into wrong drive. This is regardless of how drives where installed (i installed them separately as suggested in this thread).

My current solutions:
- disable hibernation on 1 of drives
- remove non "C:" drive when "C:" drive is going into or out of hibernation.

If anyone knows better, please suggest.

I don't use hibernation much, but the only problem I recall running into is when I hibernate the drive in the Ultrabay Slot, I need to make sure that on resume I press F12 and choose the Ultrabay drive to boot. One time I did not do this and I hosed Windows 7 requiring a reinstall.

GomJabbar wrote:I don't use hibernation much, but the only problem I recall running into is when I hibernate the drive in the Ultrabay Slot, I need to make sure that on resume I press F12 and choose the Ultrabay drive to boot. One time I did not do this and I hosed Windows 7 requiring a reinstall.

Yep. I hosed one install, and norrowly escaped repeating hosing it again (due to unfamiliarity w/ hibernation issue). So beware....