To remove the Active Mark on a hard drive
Open an Elevated Command Prompt . Click ontype CMD right click on CMD under Programs (1) and choose Run as administrator .
Type in DISKPART and Press [ENTER]
Type in LIST DISK and press [ENTER]
Type in select disk 1
NoteIf the Disk 1 is XP
Disk 1 is now the selected disk.
Type in select partition 1
Partition 1 is now the selected partition.
Type inactive
Steve, this whole thing is a puzzle. His screenshot shows only one lone partition on that disk. But maybe it was a spanned partition with another participating disk at an earlier time.
And why can the Windows 7 SSD not boot - that is a good question to which I have only some speculations but no answer.
And yes, multiple active partitions on different disks are no problem.
A quote I picked up from someone who sounds like he knows...
The answer was in the BIOS settings. Under Hard Drives it does not list the hard drives but instead lists the SATA risers. It does not show if any of the 6 risers have a drive connected to it. Apparently this is a Dell feature) When you highlight one of the risers and hit ENTER you are shown if that riser is ON or OFF. The thing is that both words are there except that one is highlighted in grey while the other is in blue. It took a while to figure out which is on or which is off. Eventually I looked at SATA0 and SATA1, since the boot disk and the DVD are connected to these risers, to see which color indicates the switch that is active. It turns out that the grey background indicates the active switch. You then have to figure out the number of the riser to which you connected the new drive and activate only that riser otherwise you get messages at boot that tells you that you do not have a drive on some activated riser. Independent motherboard makers have a much simpler system, all SETA risers are active. If you connect a hard drive to any one it is automatically recognized. Under Hard Drives they list the actual hard drives in the computer. This, to me is a much more rational system.
Actually mine has "ON" or "OFF" - a bit more direct... I may pursue this but I doubt it will help.
I've been in graphics since 1950, on computers since 1988. I'm getting a little too tired for this but I will try.
Making disk inactive: I presume if I use the one in management I will have the right one? (I have three, the other two are partitioned with their own letter).
Another dynamic and ACTIVE drive (with boot ready) would do it, I'm sure.
The 2TB drive shows just one partition 1863G.
My big question is, do the dynamic to simple first, or the active to not, first?
I would like to solve this for the experience...
Confirmation that a seond disk (partition) is active pervents a boot:
backup - How can I un-mark a partition as active? - Server Fault
You can see I haven't quit yet.
In the link you gave, he was talking about his server not doing the backups. You can have only 1 active partition on a drive, but you can have active partitions on seperate drives. The important thing is in bios to tell bios which drive to boot from, in boot options. If you make your SSD inactive, it will not boot.
Setting the boot order would be nice if I could work with the HD in Bios - but it is not possible - the BIOS does not see it. So how can I set the boot order? How can I do anything with it in the T3400? Considering that the 2TB internal is serving its purpose well enough in the XP machine, I think the simplest thing is to put in a new HD in the T3400.
Thank you everyone for the attention and time. Really. And I have found this a real learning experience. At 78, I'm glad I can absorb at least this much. Sometimes I think it's the only thing that keeps my mind alive
Thanks again, all.
vangogh, I'm only a little behind you, so I know what you mean. But, if you would copy your data off to another drive while connected to the XP machine which can read it, you could then change the drive to a basic partition and use it fine in the Windows 7 machine. Once you get the data off, the rest is easy. We will be here to help in any way we can.
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