Hi you clever lot on here. tnx here,messing again. The other day I got myself a e-SATA to SATA cable. It works a treat. The transfer rate is much quicker than USB2 (I dont have USb3). So I got to thinking I could install Windows 7 off a HDD connected via the e-SATA port. Using DISKPART i formatted a 60 gig SATA HDD and copied the installation files to the drive. I restarted my machine,slung in my spare 80gig SATA HDD which I test stuff out on and booted up from the e-SATA driver. Wow it installed Windows pretty damn quick. But.... I get BOOTMGR missing when I unplug the e-SATA and boot from the 80 gig SATA HDD. Plug the e-SATA drive back in and it boots into Windows. I have tried unpluging e-SATA and booting from a dvd to repair the boot but it wont work. Dont know why. What I would like to know......Is there a way to install W7 off a HDD onto an internal HDD without getting any BOOTMGR problems. I have not tried formatting the e-SATA into Fat32,just NTFS....Would this help somehow. Is there a way to make the e-SATA "READ ONLY". What I dont understand is why would windows load the bootMGR onto the drive the install files are on. It just seems daft whay that happens. Hope this makes sence. Any tips,advice ?? Cheers..
mmmmmmmm I think i know what you mean with that question....I hope. The first time I tried it during the install where you can pick the drive,format it etc what I did was, Deleted all partitions. made new but it did not make the usual small ome where the boot thingy lives. I sort of knew what was going to happen then. So the nest thing I did was to boot up from a USB stick with W7 install files on. Unplug e-SATA and then once again I deleted all partitions,made new this time it did make the small partion. I then formatted the big partition ready to install W7. SWITCHED OFF machine. Unplug USB. Plug e-SATA back in. Booted from e-SATA,got to the format bit. DID NOT delete any partitions just formated the big one and installed W7. Thinking this would work....Nope.... Tried repairing the bootmgr...No luck. One thing I have not tried is to use EasyBCD...That would repair my Boot thingy once windows was up and running. But I dont really want to have to install that app every time. I was hoping I am just doing a silly mistake which could be easily changed..... Does this help any ? Maybe I should try doing a repair using the USB files ? cant see any difference between that and a disc though.
Will give it a go... I think that's what I did...You worded it better.... Will try again though. The speed of the install was brilliant. Worth the messing about.