How to Make a SCSI Mirror Drive Bootable

Windows NT introduced the concept of shadow drives or mirror drives that enabled a physical drive to be split into multiple partitions greatly decreasing drive search time. This enabled older 4200 rotations-per-minute (rpm) drives to compete with the newer 7200 rpm drives. Laptops regularly use this process to create a boot partition as back up in case the main drive fails. When a drive fails you can use this boot drive to load your computer.

Things You'll Need

• Personal computer
• Mirror Drive (Dynamic Drive)
• Windows NT

Instructions

1. Right-click the system boot volume [typically C:\] and select "Add Mirror."

2. Use the "Add Mirror" drop-down menu to select a drive that contains enough free space for startup (typically at least 1 gigabyte).

3. Left-click the drive to confirm mirror synchronization.

4. Right-click the new mirror drive and select "Primary Boot Drive."

5. Press the button combination "Ctrl," "Alt" and "Delete" at the same time to bring up the control panel.

6. Under the "Shut Down" tab, left-click the restart button.

Tips & Warnings

• When you first install Windows NT, it creates a mirror drive by default allowing you to skip to step 4. This only works for Windows NT.

• This is a very advanced technique and can cause you to lose a significant amount of hard drive space if not done properly.

References

• Boot Drive Support
• Booting From Mirror