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Booting between SATA and IDE drives

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4 replies

by swilczek

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At the college where I work we use Dell Optiplex GX620 computers that have SATA drives along with IDE drives in DataPort removable drive bays.The SATA drives contain Windows XP and the majority of applications we teach. The removable drives are used for special class configurations,such as MCSE, Net+,Security+ classes and are imaged separatly from the SATA drives ( or we would like them to be.)The problem is we cannot boot the IDE drives unless they are imaged at the same time as the SATA and we do not want to re-image the SATA drives every time we need to change the IDE image.
If we disconnect the SATA and disable it in the Bios the IDE drives boot fine, but we would rather not have to open each computer before running a class.
Is there another way to boot between SATA and IDE drives?

4 replies

by zaferus

If you set your boot.ini file to give a choice between the two OS's, can't you set the boot to either drive? Also a great MCSE mini project as boot sequence is covered in the course!

by swilczek

Modifying the boot.ini file does not cure the problem. Also as a side issue the drives do not appear to be properly lettered/enumerated by Windows Disk Management.

by happyheathen

I recently worked on a Dell XPS Gen 5 and was able to reconfigure the boot drive order in the BIOS so the IDE drive would be recognized before the SATA. I'm not sure if the Optiplex may be similar.

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