dannyh

OK, I think perhaps I'll buy the argument. It does make sense. Interesting that I can boot from these drives on three other machines but perhaps they are alike enough that it just works out. Thanks.

Not sure how to best ask the question because it is something I'm not familiar with. So I'll describe the scenario: Have a new DELL Optiplex 9800, Intel i5 dual core processor, don't know the specific motherboard. I can figure it out if needed. I suspect not needed. I have a number of machines of older vintages which have SATA drives which I suspect were not set up as RAID. They were simply installed, hooked up, formatted, and OS loaded (WXP). I installed a swap-bay for SATA drives in my new machine. The intent being to be able to take the SATA drives from the older machines and run them on my new machine. The point being that each of these older machines has unique configurations/applications/setups which I want to be able to run on my single machine when needed, instead of reloading/reconfiguring/ my new machine every time I have to test features in the older machines. The goal being to just swap out my SATA drive and reboot into the target machine's environment. Problem -- New machine wont' boot up with the old machine SATA drives. I am suspecting it is because new machine controller HD controller (?) is expecting RAID configured SATA drive (the new machine original drive is set up as RAID). When I go to BIOS, with older SATA drive inserted, and attempt to change the drive to Legacy (I assume I am actually chaning the contorller on motherboard to be Legacy, not the HD itself), I am confronted with a frightening warnign that the drive may become unbootable and will need re-installatio of the OS. This of course would defeat the purpose entirely. Further, I want to be able to put the older SATA drive back into its respective original machine and have it boot as before. Soooo...is it actually safe to switch back-and-forth between RAID and LEGACY (if Legacy is the appropriate choice) each time I go swap between a SATA which was RAID and one which is not? The procedure therefore being: 1) Swap the SATA drive, 2) Go to BIOS and set that drive as Legacy. 3) conduct my testing, 4) swap back to original drive, 4) Go to BIOD and set that drive/controlle to RAID, etc.. Update: I could not hold off -- I went ahead and crossed my fingers and tried all options of drive configuration in BIOS and none of them worked. In BIOS, Drives/SATA Operation/ options are "RAID Autodetect/AHCI", "RAID Autodetect/ATA", "RAID on", "Legacy". Regardless of which configuration I select, the 'other' drives won't boot on this new machine. These 'other' drives boot fine on their original machines (P4 processors, Intel Motheboards of an older vintage) and can be swapped between three of these machines fine. It is just this new machine that doesn't allow them to boot. So the question is same -- How the heck do I get this new machine (DELL Optiplex 9800) to boot from drives other than what it was originally set up with? Is there some sort of signature/system-hash/etc. (security)?