i want to keep my computer from attempting to boot from my old IDE drive as i now have my OS on a SATA drive. how can i keep it from attempting to boot from this IDE drive? is there a hidden file i can delete? i want to keep all of the other files intact still in case i happen to need one like the program files.
i can't change boot order to SATA first since there dosent seem to be an option for it. (NF7-S mobo)
if possible id like to delete a file or files from this drive so it wont be seen as something that has an OS to boot from. (i have a firewire external drive interface i can use to access this HDD)

Some programs wont work anyway, they have to be in the registry in order to work. I think the files you need to delete are in the main drive itself, I think autoexec and all those other files are what you need to delete.

If you can't change the boot order in BIOS, you're sort of at a loss. I'm not sure why you can't. Pull out the hard drives, set the jumper to the one you want the OS to boot from to master, and set the other one to slave. Your BIOS/POST should check to see which is master and slave and boot from the appropriate one.

I can't seem to delete the WINDOWS folder from my old hard drive/old OS SATA drive, either. I'm assuming you're running XP? I think there's some sort of advanced feature which makes the WINDOWS folder unable to be deleted. The only thing I can reccomend is getting another drive, just big enough for some backup, and transfer all the files to that one. That's what I'm planning on doing. You need a spare drive, anyway...just for backup purposes. After that's done, boot to DOS, and Format C: (or whatever your drive letter is).

Cheers!

i guess i have all the important files moved already. i've just become so attached to my data i cant bear to clear it. kind of like how i keep junk and boxes around. i know i dont need it but you never know...
either way since it looks like i wont be using the drive as is so i'll take another look to make sure everything important is copied and then format the thing. i did try making it a slave, moving it to the second IDE channel, and even attaching a SATA adapter and having it as a second SATA drive. none of those kept the thing from wanting to boot from the IDE. i hope when its time for a new mobo it has SATA as assignable like IDE.
thanks for the input

Quote: Originally Posted by carbongraphite i guess i have all the important files moved already. i've just become so attached to my data i cant bear to clear it. kind of like how i keep junk and boxes around. i know i dont need it but you never know... either way since it looks like i wont be using the drive as is so i'll take another look to make sure everything important is copied and then format the thing. i did try making it a slave, moving it to the second IDE channel, and even attaching a SATA adapter and having it as a second SATA drive. none of those kept the thing from wanting to boot from the IDE. i hope when its time for a new mobo it has SATA as assignable like IDE. thanks for the input

Couldn't you have just ghosted your boot drive over to your SATA and then either make the BIOS boot off of it (which I am assuming that most computers should be able to do that now, either as an actual "boot from SATA" option or for older computers where SATA wasn't built in, to go to "boot from add-in card"?

My suggestion would be to Ghost the drive with Norton and maybe Partition Magic (if you need to adjust the partitions on the fly), unplug your original boot drive, boot off the SATA to let the system settle down, and add your original hard drive back in to verify that everything worked like it did before.

Seems the hdd pimps were out on this one.

Get parition magic shareware, last time I used it it came with a small app that let you define which of your hard disks had the primary boot record. Set boot record, restart, other disk. Nice.

You could try a Jimmy Riddle with msconfig followed by a general bit of tom foolery in my computer.

My brain isn't wound so tightly for a Monday morning that I can be of much else help at the moment. I'll post back if I think of anything else.

thanks, i guess i'll grab the partition magic floppies and try that.
to be slightly more clear i had already installed XP on the SATA drive so i could go between the two (manually by unplugging stuff) since i wanted to have little downtime and now that i am settled on my SATA drive i just wanted to have my old drive connected so i could move files. but it would want to boot from that drive. the goal is to not have that drive seen as bootable while retaining files im not sure i need or not without copying the contents of all of it.
if all else fails, or i get lazy, screw it and format! the reason i bought a new drive is this thing has a case of the click and crash HDD problem. which usually = HDD death

Quote: Originally Posted by carbongraphite thanks, i guess i'll grab the partition magic floppies and try that. to be slightly more clear i had already installed XP on the SATA drive so i could go between the two (manually by unplugging stuff) since i wanted to have little downtime and now that i am settled on my SATA drive i just wanted to have my old drive connected so i could move files. but it would want to boot from that drive. the goal is to not have that drive seen as bootable while retaining files im not sure i need or not without copying the contents of all of it. if all else fails, or i get lazy, screw it and format! the reason i bought a new drive is this thing has a case of the click and crash HDD problem. which usually = HDD death

maybe I missed it, but what's the brand/model of your old hard drive? There aren't that many that I know that actually does the whole click-of-death (COD) thing. Some just turn into shrapnel. D

its a western digital 120 gig. it sometimes makes weird noises and freezes or clicks then crashes. then again it could be windows.

Quote: Originally Posted by carbongraphite its a western digital 120 gig. it sometimes makes weird noises and freezes or clicks then crashes. then again it could be windows.

hmm...to the best of your knowledge, has it even been dropped or subjected to (unexpected) excessive shock. (i.e. impact based)

Sounds like the head's misaligning, and on its way out.

Alright, I had this problem, it sucked. Set your old drive to Slave or whatever the setting is with SATA and try that. If no dice, try setting it as master on your other cable, i.e. the one your cd drive is on. Now, you should boot up into Windows on the new hard drive. Find your boot.ini file (somewhere in system) and there should be at least two different boot paths. Delete the bad one. Should work, if not, go for the partition jazz.