Dual boot on seperate hard drives.

[gerryh]

I have two, near identical, hard drives installed in my desktop Windows PC.
I cloned the main hard drive to the other, backup, hard drive.
I would like the ability to boot from the Windows 10 partition on either the main hard drive or the backup hard drive.
I believe it is possible the the Windows 10 partition on the backup hard drive doesn't appear to be recognised as a boot partition.
Been trying various things so what am I missing?
Cheers
Gerry

[Enrique]

Hi Gerry,
Have a look at EasyBCD

http://neosmart.net/EasyBCD/

Let me know how you get on..........I could have a play later if that doesn't work............

[El Cid]

I've used EasyBCD some time ago in a dual boot system, Windows Vista and Windows 7 I think. Dead easy to select which OS you want to boot.

Sid

[gerryh]

I'm using EasyBCD. Been using it since Windows XP days.
I believe I have it set up correctly but how does it know that one of the boot partitions is on a different hard drive?
Been trying to get the dual boot working for a couple of days.
Just seem to be going around in circles and not getting anywhere.
That is why I posted on here hoping that someone would state the obvious thing I have missed.
Been looking at the new Renta Web online system that replaces the Padre program for income tax and been installing a new shower cubicle etc, in the bathroom at the same time.
My brain and back hurts.

Cheers
Gerry

[Enrique]

Hi Gerry,
Can you see the other disk if you run BCDedit.............. ?

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/lib ... s.10).aspx

I'm working on your problem this evening..........

Update:..........Just change the Boot order in the BIOS.
On a technical legal note you need a another License for the second Windows 10 system the way I read the EUL.........

[gerryh]

Tried running BCDexit, just flashes something on screen and dissapears.
Cheers
Gerry

[Enrique]

Hi Gerry,
Change boot order in BIOS

[gerryh]

Already had a look at the boot order in my Bios.
The only bootable devices it sees are my DVD drive and "main" hard drive.
I was slightly surprised not to see the "backup" hard drive.
My boot order id DVD drive then Hard drive.
Cheers
Gerry

[dxf]

Hola

Perhaps a silly question but did you format your backup drive with the option /s to make it a bootable drive?

Davexf

[Enrique]

Good morning,
Gerry Cloned his original Win 10 system to the second disk,"like what I did last night", I had the option to select my Boot Drive order in the BIOS/EFI and changed it to the second disk and it booted up ok.

Gerry:: In your case the second drive should show up in the BIOS the system needs to see it at this stage.

On the drive that boots up....shrink a small partition from it ,20GB and install Linux Mint 18.1 in that partition . The Mint Boot manager GRUB will find all the other systems and present them at Bootup and you can select whatever one you want............

I've done a Quad Boot up using this method...............

[gerryh]

I already had Linux Mint 17.1 on a DVD.
So I booted from the DVD.
It showed there was a Win 10 bootable partition on both my hard drives.
So I rebuild the MBR on the backup Hard Drive, thought it couldn't do any harm and might do some good.
Came out of Linux, restarted my machine and was able to boot from my backup hard drive.
Did a restart to check I could still boot from my main hard drive.
Can now boot from either hard drive.
So the MBR must have been corrupt some how???
Cheers
Gerry

[gerryh]

Been doing some more digging.
The latest thing I did was to plug my main HD into SATA port 0 and my backup HD into port 1.
They where the other way around.
Since then I have been able to create bootable partitions on both HDs.
Cheers
Gerry