after restore to a new system HDD, how do I use the old one as a non-system drive?
I've switched to a new system HDD; how DO I use the old one as a non-system drive? Would formatting it be enough? (I'm about to do that overnight [with Hirens Boot CD's mini-XP] just for good housekeeping.) What about wiping it with zeroes?
BTW, I foolishly discovered how NOT to: I simply attached the former system drive to another sata port. Though I made sure the new system drive was the top boot order, the PC booted to the old system drive (and it's Windows didn't even 'see' the new system drive). Stupid me, I thought I could rectify this simply by deleting the system partition on the old drive. Nope (and then I had zero drives or computers capable of getting online to beg for help here), even when I disconnected *all* HDDs but the new one from the PC.
(I guess when I booted to the old drive, it set the new one to not be sufficiently "active" [or whatever you call it]. I couldn't find how to fix that with the ATI boot media [or with Hirens Boot CD which confused me further by showing in Disk Management that the new drive is "active"].)
On a hunch, I restored the MBR from ATI boot media, and here I am, good as new (and much relieved).
Thank you VERY much for your reply, Tom K!
Formatting did partially solve the issue.
(However, after formatting it overnight [with Hirens Boot CD's mini-XP], the new system drive again booted to a pale blue repair windows screen, so I needed to again restore the MBR to my new system HDD. I honestly don't understand how mini-XP messed up the MBR; I guess even BIOS f/w could be involved. Anyway... that makes 3 times I've messed up the MBR and needed restore it in a week; AFAIK Norton Ghost didn't have the ability to restore only the MBR, so I'm cherishing this ATI functionality!)
But now Windows Disk Management (on the new HDD) says (about the formatted former system HDD) "The disk is offline because it has a signature collision with another disk that is online".
I've googled a complicated process of resolving this (https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/markrussinovich/2011/11/06/fixing-disk-signature-collisions/); might there be a easier way, please?
Coyote, one of the issues here is that you are installing the old HDD inside the computer as an additional SATA drive, plus you used the option to copy the Drive Signature from the old drive because of potentially needing this for activation purposes.
What you may want to do, is to use the old HDD as an external backup drive rather than an internal drive.
See webpage: How to Change the Disk Signature of a Drive Without Losing Existing Data or Reformatting for some suggestions of using diskpart to assign a new disk signature to the old drive.
Thank you (yet again!) for your help, Steve.
(I don't ever use external drives.)
I did notice that other link (and it does seem simpler). I'll (figure out how to) follow the advice in that/those link(s).
Upon initial readings (of the link I posted), I'm left with a concern (that could apply to either link's approach)...
The link I suggests that (instead of using diskpart to assign a new sig) in WDM one "right-click on the disk [and invoke the] “Online” command that will cause Windows to ...generate a new random disk signature and assign it to the disk by writing it to the MBR....It will then be able to process the MBR and mount the volumes present, but when Windows updates the disk signature, the BCD entries become orphaned, linked with the previous disk signature, not the new one. The boot loader will fail to locate the specified disk and boot files when booting from the disk and give up".
Perhaps this orphaned-BCD-entry-issue is moot since I that HDD isn't the system drive? (Since my question arose from a Microsoft blog, perhaps I should post to a Microsoft forum for advice on that. If so, I'm just talking out loud here and will report back anything that might prove helpful.)
Coyote, this is one of those instances where my approach would be to remove the good new SSD drive and boot the system from either a CD (such as Hiren's) or a WinPE USB Stick and do the dirty with the old HDD signature in a 'safe' environment where nothing will touch my working OS boot drive ('cos it is sitting nicely on a shelf!).
I use the MVP Tools WinPE Rescue Media on my USB stick and can use such as Diskpart from the command prompt on that media.
Hey Steve that does sound like a great plan! Thank you very much.
My issue is resolved.
I did a little more reading. When I read that the BCD does stuff boot.ini used to do, I felt comfortable that I simply needed to change the disc signature of the offending non-boot HDD.
Being a bit pressed for time, I wasn't eager to disconnect two other HDDs that have the same capacity (so I'd know which disk's sig to manually modify in Diskpart).
When I looked at http://www.multibooters.com/tutorials/resolve-a-disk-signature-collisio… (for non-boot discs like mine) I became confident that simply putting the HDD "Online" in WDM would solve my issue. And it did. And along with being fast, I liked that the new disk sig would both be assigned *randomly*, and be ensured to not match the sigs of the other 4 HDDs in the PC, by WDM.
I know Steve's suggestion to use Diskpart on boot media would have been more prudent, but I came to feel good about doing it the way I had time for today.
And now I'll run my first ATI backup of my storage (non-boot) drive to the newly recognized HDD.
Coyote, great to hear that the disk signature issue is resolved and all is looking good.