Please Help! deACTIVEating a HDD partition

[Reece]

Hi, I just installed a SATA drive and all my backup HDD's (IDE - Ghost images etc) have their partitions set to ACTIVE, this was ok for IDE only but the SATA drive will not boot if any of these drives are installed!:cry: Does anyone reading this have an Idea how to remove the ACTIVE status of these drives?:-?
Please Help!:dead:

[VON_CAPO]

Hi, I just installed a SATA drive and all my backup HDD's (IDE - Ghost images etc) have their partitions set to ACTIVE, this was ok for IDE only but the SATA drive will not boot if any of these drives are installed!:cry: Does anyone reading this have an Idea how to remove the ACTIVE status of these drives?:-?
Please Help!:dead:
Question
1) What soft are you using to determinate that X partition is active?
2) Did you install any OS in the SATA HD?
2a) Did you install the SATA drivers?
3) Did you left the old OS intact in the IDE HD?

[kiwi_2005]

Hi, I just installed a SATA drive and all my backup HDD's (IDE - Ghost images etc) have their partitions set to ACTIVE, this was ok for IDE only but the SATA drive will not boot if any of these drives are installed! Does anyone reading this have an Idea how to remove the ACTIVE status of these drives?
Please Help!

Any partitioning software will deactivate it, i use "Acronis partitioning expert 2003" you might be able to find a demo on the net. disable your backup drives load up windows install the partition software, turn off pc then reconnect the drives, restart and either do it in windows or dos - when setting up partitioning software it will ask you if you wish to make a boot cd, answer yes so incase your Stata drive wont boot to windows you will have to deactivate the old drives in dos using the boot cd.

[Reece]

Thanks Kiwi, will give that a try!:D I tried a friends version 7 of "partition magic" but that wouldn't do it! can only create an active partition not deactivate it!:-?
VON_CAPO, I have XP installed on the SATA drive & the others (except the original I took out) don't have OS's but origionally were set active so that reghosting is easier using a partition image, to do a restore.:)
Thanks, I have just downloaded a version of "Partition Logic" (donationware) & will give it a try first, even if I want to Fdisk the IDE drives to remove the active partition I would lose all the data unless I copy the info to the SATA drive first, but ofcourse I can't do that!!:damn:
Thanks, will report back findings!:up:

[VON_CAPO]

Did you try in the BIOS menu, to set the boot preferences "SATA or SCSI FIRST"?

It should look like:
1- SATA (or SCSI)
2- CD drive
3- IDE device

or

1- CD Drive
2- SATA (or SCSI)
3- IDE device

[SUBMAN1]

Hi, I just installed a SATA drive and all my backup HDD's (IDE - Ghost images etc) have their partitions set to ACTIVE, this was ok for IDE only but the SATA drive will not boot if any of these drives are installed!:cry: Does anyone reading this have an Idea how to remove the ACTIVE status of these drives?:-?
Please Help!:dead:

Does it really matter if they are active or not? THe only thing this flags is if you can boot from it or not. Not a big deal.

-S

[Reece]

Many thanks (as always) for the help!:D How I got by before taking part in forums I don't know!;) I tried to use "Acronis partition expert" but all it created was blank emergency disks (CD) so I installed "Partition Logic" it also creates a boot CD and at first it didn't work until I installed an old PS/2 mouse (doesn't like USB), this worked like a charm and marked the drive as NOT ACTIVE, But at the same time I went through & checked the bios boot setting & thought I'd try setting "VIA VT6420 1st HDD" as the first boot device & all fired up nicely, so it was this as Subman1 pointed out, I thought it would have shown this as SATA drive, would have made more sense to me!:yep: Oh well, you live & learn! at least I now know how to change partitions on the fly!:smug:
Cheers,
Reece.