Boot from 2nd HDD adapter possible?

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calkeith · #1 Post by **calkeith** » Wed Apr 18, 2007 1:21 pm

I've followed a few threads here, but none answered the question.

Is it possible to boot a T23 from the 2nd HDD residing in the "UltraBay
HDD Adapter?" FYI, both drives have XP.

If so, is there a guide listing steps to accomplish this somewhere?

Thanks, KC

#2 Post by **rkawakami** » Wed Apr 18, 2007 1:35 pm

Yes you can boot Windows from the Ultrabay-mounted hard drive but I would caution you to not have two bootable hard drives installed in the laptop at the same time. I did this one time and it resulted in Windows becoming inaccessable on the main drive.

Nothing special needs to be done as far as I'm concerned; just install the drive inside the Ultrabay adapter and power on. I have just put in a spare drive which happens to have XP on it, inside an adapter, swapped out the optical drive and booted a T23. I got a "found new hardware" message but I'm sure it's because there's an IBM wireless card in there instead of the Broadcom card that the drive was originally configured for.

andyP · #3 Post by **andyP** » Wed Apr 18, 2007 1:36 pm

To answer your question about booting, yes you can boot from a HDD in the Ultrabay.
Go into bios and make sure that both HDD0 (main) and HDD1 (Ultrabay) are entered in boot devices. It's then just a matter of pressing F12 when you boot in order to select which hdd should be booted from; hdd0 or hdd1.

Regarding a guide - I don't know or think so.

#4 Post by **GomJabbar** » Wed Apr 18, 2007 6:00 pm

You can dual boot using the 2nd HDD adapter, but I suggest you see the post made by jdhurst in the following thread regarding dual booting the same version of XP.

How to boot from Multibay

FTR, I dual boot Vista and XP using the 2nd HDD adapter. Just be aware that Vista will place a boot menu on the XP drive if it is in the machine when Vista is installed. This could become an irritation if you decide you do not want Vista as your default OS, or if you decide to remove the Vista drive from the Laptop. I chose to install Vista with the XP drive removed. After installation, I put the XP drive back in. I use F12 at boot up if I want to boot the Vista drive - otherwise the XP drive boots. Whichever OS boots becomes the C: drive.

calkeith · #5 Post by **calkeith** » Thu Apr 19, 2007 5:26 pm

Thanks for the responses.

It seems that the negative experiences in attempting to boot from
the adapter stem from having used the same XP license for both
drives, eh? My main drive is merely a recovery of original XP install.

Also, I do not see a BIOS option available to change device boot
order. Only option enabled/disabled. Am I missing something here?

Having selected boot device CD-ROM w/ adapter there...does nothing except boot from main HDD.

KC

skanky · #6 Post by **skanky** » Fri Apr 20, 2007 2:11 am

rkawakami wrote:Yes you can boot Windows from the Ultrabay-mounted hard drive but I would caution you to not have two bootable hard drives installed in the laptop at the same time. I did this one time and it resulted in Windows becoming inaccessable on the main drive.

i was just about to post asking if there were any problems dual booting XP/Vista on different hdds, one in the main bay, one in the ultrabay for my T60, but i think thats answered my question and i'll not bother anymore.

cmon notebook hardware control author bloke, vista your program!!

ducky2802 · #7 Post by **ducky2802** » Wed Apr 25, 2007 2:50 am

hmm...looks like I learned this lesson after a dozen complete factory re-installs! I noticed that from the ultrabay, using two XP boots did cause problems as described here...the main XP on the default hdd location would start acting up. But, if you install vista on the ultrabay, dual booting seemed to work okay (though I still didnt like the "to enter the recovery console..." message that showed up after switching back to XP on restart.

Boot from 2nd HDD adapter possible?

Boot from 2nd HDD adapter possible?

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