If I do an MBR, with this being so quirky, am I apt to loose the partition table too?
This just really sucks. Partition Magic screwed everything up. Things were sort of working until then. Now, I have all kind of problems.
I've change out at least a 100+ HDDs and reconfigured them--but then that was with NT4 and this is a whole new ball game.
I agree about FDISK. I went and got the new one that lets you work with large drives. So, I'm set there.
I wonder if one of the software programs for xfering data to a new drive would work? I know the Maxtor xfer setup asks if the new drive is going to be the boot. So it must do something to the MBR of the new drive and old drive. But since I'm going from a Maxtor to a WDD, I don't know what will happen. (I have concluded though, that as far as ease of operation, Maxtor to Maxtor, I think would work much more smoothly that two WDDs.)
I no longer subscribe to TechNet, but it would sure be helpful if I could learn exactly how W2K & XP not only work with assigning disk names, but what they do with the MBR and the BIOS. If I could find that out, then maybe I could solve the problem?
I read somewhere how you can reset the registry to point to swap and fool the OS so it recognizes the new drive as C. But I still think something is being written to a small section of the BIOS that is reserved. Somehow, I have to clear that?
If only I didn't have 80gigs of data, I'd just put on a new W2k and reload the programs. But with that much data if I have to do that manually, it's going to take quite a while. There's got to be a better way?
Why is this so hard? I've read all the MS kbs on the subject, but they aren't detailed enough. --can't find anything that adresses, transferring data from one HD to the other, then establish a dual boot with both HDDs having the same OS.
Bob
Unsolved 
