Safely remove a slave hard disk

[Guest]

Archived from groups: microsoft.public.windowsxp.hardware (More info?)

Hi all,

I wish to safely remove a slave hard disk from my PC running WinXP SP2.

The slave hard disk contains only data files, and all WinXP system files are
in another drive (i.e. the master disk) which will be retained.

To play safe, I tried to turned off the BIOS recognition of that slave drive
(with no physical removal of it), and see if there would be any problem.

On booting the machine with no slave hard disk recognised, Windows XP showed
the following message:

"Winodws could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt:

\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\CONFIG\SYSTEM"

This message is so wierd to me because:

1. That file in question clearly exists in the Master Drive, the one I did
not turned off in BIOS;

2. If the jumper settings of the disks means that a stand-alone master disk
and a master disk in the presence of a slave disk were different, then this
message shouldn't have appeared at all; instead something like "Missing
operating system; insert a disk a drive A:" message should appear.

The error message asked me to put a WinXP installation disk and then repair
the file.

Please advise:

1. Should I proceed the repairing?
2. Why such problem ocurred?

Thanks a lot.

Frederick Chow
Hong Kong.

 

[Jerry]

Archived from groups: microsoft.public.windowsxp.hardware (More info?)

IF, repeat IF, there is nothing on the slave drive that is required by XP or
pointed to in some other program, i.e the swap file, etc then there is no
reason you cannot just remove it from the system.

One way to check is to do a registry search, using REGEDIT, on the drive
letter of the slave drive. If you get a hit then you will have to determine
what program created the registry entry and fix it.

"Microsoft Forum" <PleaseRemoveThishkmusc@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:%23OO$x9a9EHA.3820@TK2MSFTNGP11.phx.gbl...
> Hi all,
>
> I wish to safely remove a slave hard disk from my PC running WinXP SP2.
>
> The slave hard disk contains only data files, and all WinXP system files
> are in another drive (i.e. the master disk) which will be retained.
>
> To play safe, I tried to turned off the BIOS recognition of that slave
> drive (with no physical removal of it), and see if there would be any
> problem.
>
> On booting the machine with no slave hard disk recognised, Windows XP
> showed the following message:
>
> "Winodws could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt:
>
> \WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\CONFIG\SYSTEM"
>
> This message is so wierd to me because:
>
> 1. That file in question clearly exists in the Master Drive, the one I did
> not turned off in BIOS;
>
> 2. If the jumper settings of the disks means that a stand-alone master
> disk and a master disk in the presence of a slave disk were different,
> then this message shouldn't have appeared at all; instead something like
> "Missing operating system; insert a disk a drive A:" message should
> appear.
>
> The error message asked me to put a WinXP installation disk and then
> repair the file.
>
> Please advise:
>
> 1. Should I proceed the repairing?
> 2. Why such problem ocurred?
>
> Thanks a lot.
>
> Frederick Chow
> Hong Kong.
>