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Hi,
Is there a (physical)switch that will allow me to choose between different ide drives to boot from? I remember reading about them but I can't recall what they were called. Thanks.
Unless the drives are in a swap cage the only way I know how is to set which is the boot drive in the bios.
Why do you want to boot different drives?
Have you heard of Microsoft's Virtual PC?
Give a person a fish, they eat for a day. Suggest they internet search and they learn a skill for a lifetime.
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no physical switch. even disabling a drive in the BIOS is not helpful as certain modern operating systems simply override this setting :-)
either disconnect the drive or use a 3rd party bootmanager to hide drives/partitions from operating systems that ar not supposed to access it.
Today's subliminal thought is: 'Calm down ... it's only ones and zeros.'
icq 10183575
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I wanted to have WinXP on one drive and
Ubuntu linux on a second drive. I wanted
each drive to work idependly. So, if the
master drive dies, the slave will work fine.
From what I understand linux needs to
install the boot manager in the master drive
inorder to dual boot, I did not want that.
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$80 seems a little high to do something that can be achieved for free in software.
In fact the description of the device makes a flawed argument in favour of using mechanical switches. It implies that multiple operating systems have to be on the same physical disk. They don't. Only the boot loader has to be on the Primary Master. Once the boot loader is up and running, the OS it loads can be anywhere on any disk. The only restriction is that Windows has to be on a primary partition but Linux can be on an extended partition.
If by any chance the Primary Master should die, reinstalling the Linux boot manager is no more difficult than reinstalling anything else.
Stuart
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Like Wanderer said, you can select which drive to boot from in the bios. I use that method all the time and it works very well. It only takes a few seconds to enter the bios when you want to switch drives.
Do yourself a favor BACKUP!
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Another option is to get a removable drive cage so you can physically swap drives. Or you could set the computer to look to one drive then the other for booting, then you could simply "swap drives" by turning off the power to the first drive in the boot order.
Michael J
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There are true switchs out there but you most likely have one already. I use the bios to select which bootable drive I wish to select.
Many computers use something like F12 to select boot device or you can go to bios each time.There are all sorts of programs like Bootmagic,grub and others that allow you to choose partitions.
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evry hd have jumpers to decide if it is mounted as master or slave.
conect a switch or a selector insted of those jumpers and u will be able to select who will be the master to boot from.
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