Wanted - help with XP system disk replacement...........

[LvR]

Perhaps that explains why Ghost doesn't work - they don't always know what they are talking about.

Personal experience on this particular motherboard says otherwise - you can simply change the disk boot order in the bios without changing any physical disk position and boot off either the original or the cloned disk while the other is still present.

[HomeBrewer]

I too was able to boot off either my cloned drive (SATS RAID) or the original IDE by changing BIOS settings. I didnt find out there was a problem until I removed the original. turns out as the article says that on bootup XP was doing an inventory and found the correct hardware signature on the original drive, validated itself and then continued the boot process from the raid, Doing as the article instructed (removing original for first two boots) the RAID installation did a new hardware hash and boots with or without the original present.

Seems that XP is ruthless in discovery process. Simply turning off the IDE in my ASUS A7N8X-Deluxe BIOS by setting it to "NONE" was not enough. I had to physically remove it (just ribbon cable).

[LvR]

Simply turning off the IDE in my ASUS A7N8X-Deluxe BIOS by setting it to "NONE" was not enough. I had to physically remove it (just ribbon cable).

Hmmmmmmmm - this is now about the 10th time I see mention of Windows XP bypassing the bios and speaking to the disks anyway...........................

Just to be clear - I never used a RAID on SATA - it was simple single disks used for both source and target. Perhaps its different under those circumstances - I have cloned my source disk now about 7 times and the target is currently the only disk on my machine and have seen umpteen reboots without hassles.

[MultimediaMan]

XP reads the BIOS information and enumerates Disks on the "legacy" bus (IDE or imbedded SATA) first... no matter what the boot sequence is set to in the BIOS: Primary IDE, (Master Disk0, then Slave Disk1 or SATA Channel1), Secondary IDE (Master Disk2, then Slave Disk3 or SATA Channel2). Followed by devices enumerated as Mass Storage Controllers/ Containers.

It then writes a HAL (Hardware Abstraction Layer) that hardcodes the boot sequence.

Example: If you have a RAID0 array you want to boot off of and a Hard Disk on a legacy IDE channel, Windows XP/2K3 Setup will enumerate the IDE drive as Drive C, and the RAID array as Drive D.

The workaround is simple enough: Disconnect the Single hard disk and instal, then after installation, reconnect the hard disk. Even then, XP will enumerate Drive C as Fixed Disk1, and the Hard Disk on the onboard IDE controller as Fixed Disk0, but the drive letters will still start with the RAID Array as the C Drive. It messes with your head.