Bios boot sequence question - confused

[samiam]

I always format my hard drives with multiple partitions, and then use either Maxtor Maxblast or EZ Drive to keep C drive backups on another partition.

I have my backup on the E drive, and then tried to boot to it using the bios boot sequence.
When I booted, it didn't seem to make any difference, i.e., the C drive stayed the same - I have each partition marked with a folder that has the partition number on it, so I can tell.

After several months I decided it was time to backup again, and discovered my bios sequence was still set to boot to the E drive when I tried to boot to the Maxblast disk. When I changed it to boot to the C, it wouldn't boot.
This seemed to indicate that I had been booting to the E drive, while making all the changes on the C drive, which doesn't seem to make a helluva lot of sense to me.

So the question is, when you choose to boot from a partition other than C, should that partition then
change places with the existing C drive, which is what I expected??

Anybody know what's going? Thanks

 

[RSMemphis]

If you make a primary partition the active one, then Windows will make it the new C-drive, and so on and so forth.

C- drive = active primary partition
D ... ? = primary partitions
? ... ? = extended logical drives

I hope that helps

 

[corkyg]

You don't seem to understand DOS's rules for drives and partitions. The operating system is normally placed in the Primary DOS partition. That, by convention, is C:>. All other virtual drives have to be in the Extended DOS partition. DOS must start the boot process in C, and can then be directed to load an OS from another partition. That is how Dual Boot works. But the cycle still must start in C.

The BIOS boot selection usually gives you a choice of floppy drive, CD ROM drive, Zip or LS-120 drive, or separate IDE hard drives. A partition on Drive 0 is not considered as a separate drive.

To do what you want to do would require a second HDD, which would start with D:>.

 

[samiam]

Thanks Corky - I think you mostly explained some of it - I'm not sure what the bios boot sequence is actually doing -may need a little more help

DOS must start the boot process in C, and can then be directed to load an OS from another partition. That is how Dual Boot works. But the cycle still must start in C.

If I get what you're saying, the C will stay in the same place but it will be running from the OS on the E partition? That is what it seems to be doing now, since if I set the boot sequence back from E to C, it won't boot.
Is this right?

 

[mikeyd]

The bios boot sequence is just determining which device to boot from (ie. hard disk, cdrom, floppy, etc...) not different partitions on a single drive.

 

[samiam]

mikeyd
That sounds good, but why will it now boot when set to E and not C?

 

[mikeyd]

Not sure. Every bios I've ever seen have never diferentiated between drive letters, they have allways just referenced physical hard drives in the system and floppy, scsi, cdrom, etc...
I have never seen a bios that lets you pick a drive letter. - In fact I don't think the bios can see drive letters - they can only see your physical drives. If you had 2 hard drives it would see the 2 drives but not the partitions.