Windows 7: What do Active, Primary and Logical mean when applied to Hard drives?

Disk0 & Disk1 should still show on top view.

Will that allow me to boot from the win 7 hd? I'm concerned that if D dies I will not be able to boot up.

If that happens you can always run a startup repair to fix the master boot record.

Startup Repair

You would need to run it three times.

This is all I get when I go to the expanded disk management screen. I used to have a disk 1 showing. I do have 4 physical disks in my pc plus the external hd (J). D or 1 is no longer showing up because it is failing. You can see D (labeled Old XP) in my first ss at the top of the page.

You can see disk 1 displayed in this ss



Unfortunately I don't think I can access it any longer.

What do you have connected to the first two Sata Ports?

I've noticed that if I unplug the power from D to stop it from making noise, I can't boot the pc. I did use a utility to save a copy of the MBR from the win 7 hd but your method sounds more thorough.

Physically disconnect the ALL the HD.
Make the Win dows 7 HD, disk0 & first HD boot in BIOS. (& frist Sata port on the MOBO.)
Make sure C: is master.

Follow this base tutorial:
Help me get windows 7 to boot (again)

Disk 2 and 3 are connect to sata the other 2 drives are ata I believe. They are not sata drives.

How do I tell which physical disk in the machine is the one containing the win 7 so that I can make sure it's connected to the first sata port?

When you say physically disconnect the drives, do you mean all cables, power as well as data cables?

You say, your C: Drive is IDE. (PATA)

EDIT: Miss read.

C: HD is SATA, the MOBO SATA port are marked 1,2,3,4. Some MOBO start with a SATA port 0.