[ale] OT:Hard Drive Switcher

[Robert Coggins]

I agree with you about boot loaders...  But let me say this...  Windows 
sucks.  It requires for some MS crap to be on hd0 and I do not want to 
reformat and move partitions on all of my drives (not right now anyway) 
just so that I can have windows in hd0.  I hardly use windows anyways. 
I did not want to fight the system just to boot to windows once a month.

Anyway, the way I was talking about is virtually a boot loader.  I do 
NOT have to go into the bios.  There is an option I can press and it 
gives a list of items I can boot from...   Floppy HDD-0 HDD-1 USB CDROM 
etc...  I thought it was a pleasant surprise.

Maybe (Hopefully) I am wrong about windows needing to have garbage on 
HD0 and I can get it to work.  Please let me know if I am wrong.

-Rob

Geoffrey wrote:

> Robert Coggins wrote:
> 
>> Check you system board.  On mine I can tell it to boot from HDD 0 or 
>> HDD 2  This worked for me when I found an old HDD of mine with win on 
>> it.  I just put it in as slave. During post pressed escape to catch 
>> the boot device and directed it to HDD 1 Worked like a champ.  No work 
>> on boot loader required... and I didn't have to mess around with 
>> building some sort of switch...
> 
> 
> I still don't get it.  You obviously have to enter the bios to do this. 
>  It would be so much simpler to just use a boot loader.  You box boots, 
> you have menu, you select.  Why the painful alternatives to a boot loader?
>