[KLUG Members] Win2k+linux and some questions on Hard drives

[Bryan J. Smith]

Adam Bultman wrote:
> IF telling the motherboard to boot another drive is tricking it,
> then turning on my blinkers in my car is tricking my car to do
> tmhat, too.

Okay, now we're onto the "semantics" game.  Great!  Nitpicking over
terminology is not my ideal "user group" ettique.

*BUT* your analogy is a good one because it _emphasizes_my_point_
further!

If telling the motherboard to ignore one drive so it can boot another is
tricking it, then telling my car to ignoring my windshield wipers so I
can turn on my blinkers is _unacceptable_ to me.  ;-P

This is the case with some DOS-based Windows (including Windows 9x)
versions who have to have a BIOS fixed disk ID assigned so it can access
it, otherwise they don't see it.  It isn't the case with any recent
version of NT/2000/XP I know (except maybe NT 4.0 before SP4 which had
various disk geometry issues).

> When I think of tricks, I think of 'doing something that it wasn't
> really meant to, but I've managed to do somehow, at the cost of
> stability and life'.

My point exactly.  ;-P

> Overclocking is tricking, in my book.  Telling it to boot another
> drive is just letting it do it's job.  I think now that motherboards
> are smarter, and let you do so much more, it's a misnomer to call
> it a trick, and, to boot (no pun intended), it confuses people.

It's great that mainboards are now "smarter."  But what if you move your
hard drive to another system with a mainboard that handles it
differently?

My case-in-point:  Try to avoid having to "play tricks" and if you
really need to, do it at the MBR.  Always put Windows on the first drive
if you can.

-- TheBS

-- 
Bryan J. Smith, Engineer          mailto:b.j.smith@ieee.org
AbsoluteValue Systems, Inc.       http://www.linux-wlan.org
SmithConcepts, Inc.            http://www.SmithConcepts.com