Having eventually (*) managed to recover my system back up onto a
replacement hard drive when the original one failed, I've ended up with a
basic Win7 operating system on another SATA drive that I want to use as a
second drive in an existing Win7 system.

If I just bung it in, is Win7 going to object to having two bootable drives
(C: and this new one that will be F before I can use the system to format
the drive?


(*) I've been religiously backing up my system every week across the network
to a 1Tb external USB drive on another pc. When I needed to actually use the
system image to recover the failed system it turns out the Win7 'system
restore' cannot recover from an external USB drive - it can see the file
directory ('WindowsImageBackup'), tells me what date the latest back up set
is, but then claims that it contains no back up files despite being 190 Gb
large! - copying that directory to a second internal SATA drive, 'system
restore' was quite happy to use it an get me back up and running - very odd.

!!!!!!!!! Please don't let this thread degenerate into a Windows / Unix / I
hate Bill Gates rant !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Andrew

On 04/10/2015 13:26, Andrew Mawson wrote:
Having eventually (*) managed to recover my system back up onto a
replacement hard drive when the original one failed, I've ended up with
a basic Win7 operating system on another SATA drive that I want to use
as a second drive in an existing Win7 system.

If I just bung it in, is Win7 going to object to having two bootable
drives (C: and this new one that will be F before I can use the system
to format the drive?

It shouldn't care. The system will boot off the nominated boot drive and
only try alternatives when/if the primary drive fails. I have been known
to have several OS's available depending on the chosen physical drive or
sometimes active partition on one drive. Worst case it might ask you to
choose between them at boot time.

One to watch is that some PC BIOSes have "Boot from USB drive" set as a
higher priority than internal drives which may not be helpful.

It can be quite useful when things are misbehaving to have a sacrificial
image of a working drive. These days virtual machines have largely
supplanted the need to have several old OS's fully bootable.

(*) I've been religiously backing up my system every week across the
network to a 1Tb external USB drive on another pc. When I needed to
actually use the system image to recover the failed system it turns out
the Win7 'system restore' cannot recover from an external USB drive - it
can see the file directory ('WindowsImageBackup'), tells me what date
the latest back up set is, but then claims that it contains no back up
files despite being 190 Gb large! - copying that directory to a second
internal SATA drive, 'system restore' was quite happy to use it an get
me back up and running - very odd.

Worth using a better third party back program then. Several free ones
ought to be up to the task. Although I am loathe to recommend one just
in case it doesn't work with your combination of hardware.

Way back we tripped over a 2GB boundary fault on a big system backup
which happily made the backups to tape but could only recover the
content up to the magic 2GB boundary when we hit trouble.

Not a happy bunny that day

!!!!!!!!! Please don't let this thread degenerate into a Windows / Unix
/ I hate Bill Gates rant !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Andrew


--
Regards,
Martin Brown

On 04/10/15 13:39, Martin Brown wrote:
The system will boot off the nominated boot drive and only try
alternatives when/if the primary drive fails.

That is the key issue. Boot order is set in the bios before the system
even goes near a disk.

Once booted the 'old' drive will appear wherever it appears according to
the particular operating system in use.

Two things to note, not all systems automount drives where you might
expect them, if at all.

Secondly, I would say the MTBF of a commercial drive is around 5 years.
If it older than that do you really want to keep it as an active device?




--
Global warming is the new Margaret Thatcher. There is no ill in the
world it's not directly responsible for.

I don't think it will be a problem. I've certainly done it on xp, so must be
worth a try.
Brian

--
From the Sofa of Brian Gaff Reply address is active
Remember, if you don't like where I post
or what I say, you don't have to
read my posts! :-)
"Andrew Mawson" wrote in message
...
Having eventually (*) managed to recover my system back up onto a
replacement hard drive when the original one failed, I've ended up with a
basic Win7 operating system on another SATA drive that I want to use as a
second drive in an existing Win7 system.

If I just bung it in, is Win7 going to object to having two bootable
drives (C: and this new one that will be F before I can use the system
to format the drive?


(*) I've been religiously backing up my system every week across the
network to a 1Tb external USB drive on another pc. When I needed to
actually use the system image to recover the failed system it turns out
the Win7 'system restore' cannot recover from an external USB drive - it
can see the file directory ('WindowsImageBackup'), tells me what date the
latest back up set is, but then claims that it contains no back up files
despite being 190 Gb large! - copying that directory to a second internal
SATA drive, 'system restore' was quite happy to use it an get me back up
and running - very odd.

!!!!!!!!! Please don't let this thread degenerate into a Windows / Unix /
I hate Bill Gates rant !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Andrew

On 04/10/2015 14:22, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
On 04/10/15 13:39, Martin Brown wrote:
The system will boot off the nominated boot drive and only try
alternatives when/if the primary drive fails.

That is the key issue. Boot order is set in the bios before the system
even goes near a disk.

Typically you can go into the initial (bios) setup and choose the boot
order i.e. whether to try diskette or CD/DVD first and then which order
to try the hard drives. Sometimes you can press a button during the
POST which then lets you choose the boot device - could be a USB stick
these days.

Typically replacing a boot hard drive with an SSD will make the machine
run faster.


--
Michael Chare

"Andrew Mawson" wrote in message
...
Having eventually (*) managed to recover my system back up onto a
replacement hard drive when the original one failed, I've ended up with a
basic Win7 operating system on another SATA drive that I want to use as a
second drive in an existing Win7 system.

If I just bung it in, is Win7 going to object to having two bootable
drives (C: and this new one that will be F before I can use the system
to format the drive?

No.

(*) I've been religiously backing up my system every week across the
network to a 1Tb external USB drive on another pc. When I needed to
actually use the system image to recover the failed system it turns out
the Win7 'system restore' cannot recover from an external USB drive - it
can see the file directory ('WindowsImageBackup'), tells me what date the
latest back up set is, but then claims that it contains no back up files
despite being 190 Gb large! - copying that directory to a second internal
SATA drive, 'system restore' was quite happy to use it an get me back up
and running - very odd.

!!!!!!!!! Please don't let this thread degenerate into a Windows / Unix /
I hate Bill Gates rant !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

On 04/10/15 16:37, Michael Chare wrote:
On 04/10/2015 14:22, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
On 04/10/15 13:39, Martin Brown wrote:
The system will boot off the nominated boot drive and only try
alternatives when/if the primary drive fails.

That is the key issue. Boot order is set in the bios before the system
even goes near a disk.

Typically you can go into the initial (bios) setup and choose the boot
order i.e. whether to try diskette or CD/DVD first and then which order
to try the hard drives. Sometimes you can press a button during the
POST which then lets you choose the boot device - could be a USB stick
these days.

Typically replacing a boot hard drive with an SSD will make the machine
run faster.

By about a factor of 10 with a decent SATA interface on file reads, anyway.

That's what I have done - gone SSD only on the desktop. and a fanless
video card as well. ONLY CPU fan and PSU fan left as 'mechanical'
components.

Power consumption is also much lower now as well.

The main 'store everything (twice)' server is still spinning rust tho.




--
Global warming is the new Margaret Thatcher. There is no ill in the
world it's not directly responsible for.

On 04/10/2015 13:26, Andrew Mawson wrote:
Having eventually (*) managed to recover my system back up onto a
replacement hard drive when the original one failed, I've ended up with
a basic Win7 operating system on another SATA drive that I want to use
as a second drive in an existing Win7 system.

If I just bung it in, is Win7 going to object to having two bootable
drives (C: and this new one that will be F before I can use the system
to format the drive?

It depends on BIOS and your MB.

Most BIOSes don't distinguish one hard disk from another, such that its
pot luck which the system will boot from.

Having said that, most BIOSes then have a boot option screen where you
can choose the disk itself with your chosen OS. But that has to done
every time you boot the PC.

With luck and it boots up from the wrong disk, you can possibly swap the
drive cables around to boot from the preferred disk.

In message , Fredxxx
writes
On 04/10/2015 13:26, Andrew Mawson wrote:
Having eventually (*) managed to recover my system back up onto a
replacement hard drive when the original one failed, I've ended up with
a basic Win7 operating system on another SATA drive that I want to use
as a second drive in an existing Win7 system.

If I just bung it in, is Win7 going to object to having two bootable
drives (C: and this new one that will be F before I can use the system
to format the drive?

It depends on BIOS and your MB.

Most BIOSes don't distinguish one hard disk from another, such that its
pot luck which the system will boot from.

I don't think that's true, AFAICR all the PC's here do.

Having said that, most BIOSes then have a boot option screen where you
can choose the disk itself with your chosen OS. But that has to done
every time you boot the PC.

Certainly this PC lets you specify the boot disk in the bios.

But I'd have to go and check the others to be sure
--
Chris French

On 04/10/15 18:52, Fredxxx wrote:
Having said that, most BIOSes then have a boot option screen where
you can choose the disk itself with your chosen OS. But that has to
done every time you boot the PC.

With luck and it boots up from the wrong disk, you can possibly swap
the drive cables around to boot from the preferred disk.

that only works with IDE.

SATA tends to have some BIOS arrangement that actually detects the disks
via some unique signature and asks you 'what order do you want to boot
these' and stores the result in flash memory in the bios somewhere..


--
Global warming is the new Margaret Thatcher. There is no ill in the
world it's not directly responsible for.

On 04/10/2015 13:26, Andrew Mawson wrote:
Having eventually (*) managed to recover my system back up onto a
replacement hard drive when the original one failed, I've ended up with
a basic Win7 operating system on another SATA drive that I want to use
as a second drive in an existing Win7 system.

If I just bung it in, is Win7 going to object to having two bootable
drives (C: and this new one that will be F before I can use the system
to format the drive?

No because the boot loader specifies the volume that should be booted by
a combination of interface, drive, and partition.

It will either automatically allocate new drive letters to the
partitions on the drive, or possibly none at all (you can allocated them
yourself in the drive management snap in).

(*) I've been religiously backing up my system every week across the
network to a 1Tb external USB drive on another pc. When I needed to
actually use the system image to recover the failed system it turns out
the Win7 'system restore' cannot recover from an external USB drive - it
can see the file directory ('WindowsImageBackup'), tells me what date
the latest back up set is, but then claims that it contains no back up
files despite being 190 Gb large! - copying that directory to a second
internal SATA drive, 'system restore' was quite happy to use it an get
me back up and running - very odd.

Never actually tried using system restore... did you have the external
drive on a USB3 interface? (That may have required additional drivers to
function correctly)

!!!!!!!!! Please don't let this thread degenerate into a Windows / Unix
/ I hate Bill Gates rant !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Don't hold your breath ;-)


--
Cheers,

John.

/================================================== ===============\
| Internode Ltd - http://www.internode.co.uk |
|-----------------------------------------------------------------|
| John Rumm - john(at)internode(dot)co(dot)uk |
\================================================= ================/

On 04/10/15 20:29, Tim Streater wrote:
In article , The Natural Philosopher
wrote:

On 04/10/15 18:52, Fredxxx wrote:
Having said that, most BIOSes then have a boot option screen where
you can choose the disk itself with your chosen OS. But that has to
done every time you boot the PC.

With luck and it boots up from the wrong disk, you can possibly swap
the drive cables around to boot from the preferred disk.

that only works with IDE.

SATA tends to have some BIOS arrangement that actually detects the disks
via some unique signature and asks you 'what order do you want to boot
these' and stores the result in flash memory in the bios somewhere..

All of this sounds exceedingly pathetic. Are you telling me that none
of you has a Startup Disk panel in your System Prefs, which lists the
bootable drives, allowing you to pick one?


Only Apple writes its own BIOS and has it guaranteed to be accessible in
a fixed way from the OS



--
Global warming is the new Margaret Thatcher. There is no ill in the
world it's not directly responsible for.

Tim Streater wrote:

I thought the BIOS was supposed to be a standard?

It's a dying one, last three machines I've bought have UEFI instead of BIOS

On 04/10/15 22:57, Andy Burns wrote:
Tim Streater wrote:

I thought the BIOS was supposed to be a standard?

It's a dying one, last three machines I've bought have UEFI instead of BIOS

And there is no standard BIOS call for 'select and store next boot device'

UEFI is a sort of bios anyway. Its just got extra feetchas.

--
Global warming is the new Margaret Thatcher. There is no ill in the
world it's not directly responsible for.

"John Rumm" wrote in message
o.uk...

On 04/10/2015 13:26, Andrew Mawson wrote:
Having eventually (*) managed to recover my system back up onto a
replacement hard drive when the original one failed, I've ended up with
a basic Win7 operating system on another SATA drive that I want to use
as a second drive in an existing Win7 system.

If I just bung it in, is Win7 going to object to having two bootable
drives (C: and this new one that will be F before I can use the system
to format the drive?

No because the boot loader specifies the volume that should be booted by a
combination of interface, drive, and partition.

It will either automatically allocate new drive letters to the partitions
on the drive, or possibly none at all (you can allocated them yourself in
the drive management snap in).

(*) I've been religiously backing up my system every week across the
network to a 1Tb external USB drive on another pc. When I needed to
actually use the system image to recover the failed system it turns out
the Win7 'system restore' cannot recover from an external USB drive - it
can see the file directory ('WindowsImageBackup'), tells me what date
the latest back up set is, but then claims that it contains no back up
files despite being 190 Gb large! - copying that directory to a second
internal SATA drive, 'system restore' was quite happy to use it an get
me back up and running - very odd.

Never actually tried using system restore... did you have the external
drive on a USB3 interface? (That may have required additional drivers to
function correctly)

!!!!!!!!! Please don't let this thread degenerate into a Windows / Unix
/ I hate Bill Gates rant !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Don't hold your breath ;-)



No it was USB2, and not only that I could see all the files on it from the
DOS / Command prompt built into the 'System Restore' disk, so the mechanics
of reading seemed to function ok

Andrew

On 04/10/2015 18:39, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
On 04/10/15 16:37, Michael Chare wrote:
On 04/10/2015 14:22, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
On 04/10/15 13:39, Martin Brown wrote:
The system will boot off the nominated boot drive and only try
alternatives when/if the primary drive fails.

That is the key issue. Boot order is set in the bios before the system
even goes near a disk.

Typically you can go into the initial (bios) setup and choose the boot
order i.e. whether to try diskette or CD/DVD first and then which order
to try the hard drives. Sometimes you can press a button during the
POST which then lets you choose the boot device - could be a USB stick
these days.

Typically replacing a boot hard drive with an SSD will make the machine
run faster.

By about a factor of 10 with a decent SATA interface on file reads, anyway.

That's what I have done - gone SSD only on the desktop. and a fanless
video card as well. ONLY CPU fan and PSU fan left as 'mechanical'
components.

If you only ever use 2D graphics and have an i5 or i7 the chips own
native graphics are entirely adequate and even lower power.

Obviously it is very poor for 3D gaming.

Power consumption is also much lower now as well.

The main 'store everything (twice)' server is still spinning rust tho.

I can't recommend the spinning rust with Intel SSD smart cache in front
- mine worked for just long enough to fail out of warrantee

I favour Samsung SSDs these days for fast speeds on incompressible data.
Some makers game the benchmarks a la VW (what a surprise - NOT).

I still don't trust them and only use the to cache working files and OS.

--
Regards,
Martin Brown

On 04/10/2015 19:33, Chris French wrote:
In message , Fredxxx writes
On 04/10/2015 13:26, Andrew Mawson wrote:
Having eventually (*) managed to recover my system back up onto a
replacement hard drive when the original one failed, I've ended up with
a basic Win7 operating system on another SATA drive that I want to use
as a second drive in an existing Win7 system.

If I just bung it in, is Win7 going to object to having two bootable
drives (C: and this new one that will be F before I can use the system
to format the drive?

It depends on BIOS and your MB.

Most BIOSes don't distinguish one hard disk from another, such that
its pot luck which the system will boot from.

I don't think that's true, AFAICR all the PC's here do.

Having said that, most BIOSes then have a boot option screen where you
can choose the disk itself with your chosen OS. But that has to done
every time you boot the PC.

Certainly this PC lets you specify the boot disk in the bios.

But I'd have to go and check the others to be sure

I have never seen a BIOS that doesn't allow you to specify the boot
priority order and the first drive with a valid OS gets to go.

--
Regards,
Martin Brown

On 05/10/15 10:00, Martin Brown wrote:
On 04/10/2015 18:39, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
On 04/10/15 16:37, Michael Chare wrote:
On 04/10/2015 14:22, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
On 04/10/15 13:39, Martin Brown wrote:
The system will boot off the nominated boot drive and only try
alternatives when/if the primary drive fails.

That is the key issue. Boot order is set in the bios before the system
even goes near a disk.

Typically you can go into the initial (bios) setup and choose the boot
order i.e. whether to try diskette or CD/DVD first and then which order
to try the hard drives. Sometimes you can press a button during the
POST which then lets you choose the boot device - could be a USB stick
these days.

Typically replacing a boot hard drive with an SSD will make the machine
run faster.

By about a factor of 10 with a decent SATA interface on file reads,
anyway.

That's what I have done - gone SSD only on the desktop. and a fanless
video card as well. ONLY CPU fan and PSU fan left as 'mechanical'
components.

If you only ever use 2D graphics and have an i5 or i7 the chips own
native graphics are entirely adequate and even lower power.

Ah well it just happens that it is a 3D game that suffers badly..;-)


Obviously it is very poor for 3D gaming.

Power consumption is also much lower now as well.

The main 'store everything (twice)' server is still spinning rust tho.

I can't recommend the spinning rust with Intel SSD smart cache in front
- mine worked for just long enough to fail out of warrantee


I simply don't have much of a problem. Small files are cached in the
clients own RAM anyway, on writes, and reads are as fast as the network
allows - 100Mbs - so no faster disk is gonna help there.

I favour Samsung SSDs these days for fast speeds on incompressible data.
Some makers game the benchmarks a la VW (what a surprise - NOT).

I still don't trust them and only use the to cache working files and OS.


I've got a kingston SSD for the OS only.

My data is too big and needs to be duplicated for safety anyway.

And access speeds for a single user or a couple is well fast enough on
the rust.

But I think SSDS are now as long lived as spinning rust anyway,.



--
Global warming is the new Margaret Thatcher. There is no ill in the
world it's not directly responsible for.

On 05/10/15 10:36, Martin Brown wrote:
On 04/10/2015 19:33, Chris French wrote:
In message , Fredxxx
writes
On 04/10/2015 13:26, Andrew Mawson wrote:
Having eventually (*) managed to recover my system back up onto a
replacement hard drive when the original one failed, I've ended up with
a basic Win7 operating system on another SATA drive that I want to use
as a second drive in an existing Win7 system.

If I just bung it in, is Win7 going to object to having two bootable
drives (C: and this new one that will be F before I can use the
system
to format the drive?

It depends on BIOS and your MB.

Most BIOSes don't distinguish one hard disk from another, such that
its pot luck which the system will boot from.

I don't think that's true, AFAICR all the PC's here do.

Having said that, most BIOSes then have a boot option screen where you
can choose the disk itself with your chosen OS. But that has to done
every time you boot the PC.

Certainly this PC lets you specify the boot disk in the bios.

But I'd have to go and check the others to be sure

I have never seen a BIOS that doesn't allow you to specify the boot
priority order and the first drive with a valid OS gets to go.

No, my latest bios lists all the disks connected to the system and
allows you to specify each individual disk in whatever order you like.

Obviously with USB, you can just say 'first usb device' but if it is
actually connected, you can select which one to boot off.



--
Global warming is the new Margaret Thatcher. There is no ill in the
world it's not directly responsible for.

On 05/10/2015 10:53, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
On 05/10/15 10:36, Martin Brown wrote:
On 04/10/2015 19:33, Chris French wrote:
In message , Fredxxx
writes
On 04/10/2015 13:26, Andrew Mawson wrote:
Having eventually (*) managed to recover my system back up onto a
replacement hard drive when the original one failed, I've ended up
with
a basic Win7 operating system on another SATA drive that I want to use
as a second drive in an existing Win7 system.

If I just bung it in, is Win7 going to object to having two bootable
drives (C: and this new one that will be F before I can use the
system
to format the drive?

It depends on BIOS and your MB.

Most BIOSes don't distinguish one hard disk from another, such that
its pot luck which the system will boot from.

I don't think that's true, AFAICR all the PC's here do.

Having said that, most BIOSes then have a boot option screen where you
can choose the disk itself with your chosen OS. But that has to done
every time you boot the PC.

Certainly this PC lets you specify the boot disk in the bios.

But I'd have to go and check the others to be sure

I have never seen a BIOS that doesn't allow you to specify the boot
priority order and the first drive with a valid OS gets to go.

No, my latest bios lists all the disks connected to the system and
allows you to specify each individual disk in whatever order you like.

Obviously with USB, you can just say 'first usb device' but if it is
actually connected, you can select which one to boot off.

Yours may well list them all.

For an example a PC that has a RAID data drive will typically insists on
booting from the RAID drive rather than an SSD drive.

BIOS has no option or is over-ridden to attempt to boot from the RAID
drive and we have to intervene to boot off the SSD.

In article ,
Andrew Mawson wrote:
Having eventually (*) managed to recover my system back up onto a
replacement hard drive when the original one failed, I've ended up with
a basic Win7 operating system on another SATA drive that I want to use
as a second drive in an existing Win7 system.

If I just bung it in, is Win7 going to object to having two bootable
drives (C: and this new one that will be F before I can use the
system to format the drive?

There's a free utility called Easy BCD which allows multiple OS including
the one you set as default. No reason why you couldn't have two Win 7 -
just give them a different name (Win7 and Win7A, or whatever)

--
*A conscience is what hurts when all your other parts feel so good *

Dave Plowman London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.

"The Natural Philosopher" wrote in message
...

On 05/10/15 10:00, Martin Brown wrote:
On 04/10/2015 18:39, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
On 04/10/15 16:37, Michael Chare wrote:
On 04/10/2015 14:22, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
On 04/10/15 13:39, Martin Brown wrote:
The system will boot off the nominated boot drive and only try
alternatives when/if the primary drive fails.

That is the key issue. Boot order is set in the bios before the system
even goes near a disk.

Typically you can go into the initial (bios) setup and choose the boot
order i.e. whether to try diskette or CD/DVD first and then which order
to try the hard drives. Sometimes you can press a button during the
POST which then lets you choose the boot device - could be a USB stick
these days.

Typically replacing a boot hard drive with an SSD will make the machine
run faster.

By about a factor of 10 with a decent SATA interface on file reads,
anyway.

That's what I have done - gone SSD only on the desktop. and a fanless
video card as well. ONLY CPU fan and PSU fan left as 'mechanical'
components.

If you only ever use 2D graphics and have an i5 or i7 the chips own
native graphics are entirely adequate and even lower power.

Ah well it just happens that it is a 3D game that suffers badly..;-)


Obviously it is very poor for 3D gaming.

Power consumption is also much lower now as well.

The main 'store everything (twice)' server is still spinning rust tho.

I can't recommend the spinning rust with Intel SSD smart cache in front
- mine worked for just long enough to fail out of warrantee


I simply don't have much of a problem. Small files are cached in the
clients own RAM anyway, on writes, and reads are as fast as the network
allows - 100Mbs - so no faster disk is gonna help there.

I favour Samsung SSDs these days for fast speeds on incompressible data.
Some makers game the benchmarks a la VW (what a surprise - NOT).

I still don't trust them and only use the to cache working files and OS.


I've got a kingston SSD for the OS only.

My data is too big and needs to be duplicated for safety anyway.

And access speeds for a single user or a couple is well fast enough on the
rust.

But I think SSDS are now as long lived as spinning rust anyway,.




Your reference to 'spinning rust' amuses me. The SATA drive I dismantled
this morning to destroy the data had four platters that appeared to be
coated in a nickel deposit, though probably somewhat more complex than just
nickel - I well remember the 5 & 10 Mb 'exchangeable' disks on mini
computers in the 1970's that had a ferric oxide coating on aluminium
platters, and you knew if you'd had a head crash by the red dust when you
opened the machine


Andrew