I have a Mac Pro (early 2008) with 4 internal drives. About a year ago I did a BC installation of Windows XP Pro on one drive, and recently I did a BC installation of WIN7-64 on another drive. The drives are:
Bay1: 1 partition: SL (Mac OS Extended Journaled)
Bay2: 2 partitions: WIN7-64 (NTFS) / SL backup (Mac OS Extended Journaled)
Bay3: 1 partition: Data (NTFS)
Bay4: 2 partitions: WIN-XP (NTFS) / Data (Mac OS Extended Journaled)
This may or may not be important, but NTFS-3G is active in my Snow Leopard installation.
When I want to boot into Windows I hold the option key down and am presented with:
Snow Leopard Snow Leopard Backup Windows
I select Windows and am then presented with a DOS-like screen giving me the choice of booting into Windows 7 or "Earlier version of Windows". All fine, and I can elect to boot into either WIN-XP or WIN7.
I bought Acronis True Image Home 2011 and the Plus Pak (to handle GUID partitions) and a 2T drive to use to back-up the 2 Windows partitions
I removed the drive holding data only from Bay3 and inserted and partitioned the new 2T drive as follows:
1-HFS Journaled
2-NTFS (to hold the Windows backups)
I then used Acronis to individually back up the WIN7-64 and and WIN-XP partitions to the NTFS partition on the 2T drive. That all went fine.
I obviously want the 2T backup drive available all the time to do backups. Since I don't use WIN-XP much anymore, and I also need the data on the drive that was in Bay3 to be available, I removed the drive with the WIN-XP partition (Bay4), moved the 2T drive into Bay4. Then I put the data drive back into Bay3.
Here's the problem: Now, when I reboot the Mac and hold down the Option key to select Windows, it no longer appears as an option. Only my two SL installations are presented. Ditto with the Startup Drive function in System Preferences.
On a hunch, I removed the new backup drive from Bay4, put the drive with WIN-XP back into Bay4, and everything works as before.
So it seems to me that there is something on the WIN-XP drive that enables the Mac to see the WIN-XP partition and the WIN7-64 partitions as bootable. Remove the disk containing WIN-XP and the Mac can't see the WIN7-64 installation either.
Is there a fix for this?
Thanks.
Jev McKee
Bay1: 1 partition: SL (Mac OS Extended Journaled)
Bay2: 2 partitions: WIN7-64 (NTFS) / SL backup (Mac OS Extended Journaled)
Bay3: 1 partition: Data (NTFS)
Bay4: 2 partitions: WIN-XP (NTFS) / Data (Mac OS Extended Journaled)
This may or may not be important, but NTFS-3G is active in my Snow Leopard installation.
When I want to boot into Windows I hold the option key down and am presented with:
Snow Leopard Snow Leopard Backup Windows
I select Windows and am then presented with a DOS-like screen giving me the choice of booting into Windows 7 or "Earlier version of Windows". All fine, and I can elect to boot into either WIN-XP or WIN7.
I bought Acronis True Image Home 2011 and the Plus Pak (to handle GUID partitions) and a 2T drive to use to back-up the 2 Windows partitions
I removed the drive holding data only from Bay3 and inserted and partitioned the new 2T drive as follows:
1-HFS Journaled
2-NTFS (to hold the Windows backups)
I then used Acronis to individually back up the WIN7-64 and and WIN-XP partitions to the NTFS partition on the 2T drive. That all went fine.
I obviously want the 2T backup drive available all the time to do backups. Since I don't use WIN-XP much anymore, and I also need the data on the drive that was in Bay3 to be available, I removed the drive with the WIN-XP partition (Bay4), moved the 2T drive into Bay4. Then I put the data drive back into Bay3.
Here's the problem: Now, when I reboot the Mac and hold down the Option key to select Windows, it no longer appears as an option. Only my two SL installations are presented. Ditto with the Startup Drive function in System Preferences.
On a hunch, I removed the new backup drive from Bay4, put the drive with WIN-XP back into Bay4, and everything works as before.
So it seems to me that there is something on the WIN-XP drive that enables the Mac to see the WIN-XP partition and the WIN7-64 partitions as bootable. Remove the disk containing WIN-XP and the Mac can't see the WIN7-64 installation either.
Is there a fix for this?
Thanks.
Jev McKee
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