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Delete the boot sector of a hard drive

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Shining -  
 Anonymous user -
Hello,
I need your help to completely remove the boot from my hard drive without formatting it.

I connected my Data Drive to SATA 1 and during my reinstallation, the Windows 7 boot went on it.

I no longer want it, but I don't want to delete my data.

I am currently reinstalling everything cleanly on my OS drive.

Thank you

Configuration: Windows 7 / Chrome 34.0.1847.116

4 answers

  2. Anonymous user
     
    Hello,
    Disconnect your second hard drive, keeping only the one with Windows 7.
    Launch your installation DVD at startup, choose Repair, and in the interface, select startup repair.
    Try to restart with just this hard drive.
    If it restarts normally, you can then shut it down and reconnect your second hard drive. Normally, the old boot files from the second hard drive should no longer be active and should not be present at startup.
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  3. Shining
     
    Thanks for your responses, but it's a bit more complex.
    Let me explain:

    I am on Trial Boot. My Boot is working fine (Chimera 3).
    However, I have 4 boot entries in my Boot Selector. (my "grub" if you prefer)
    One of which serves no purpose.

    So I have 2 options: either I configure Chimera to stop displaying my 4th boot that leads nowhere, or I delete this 4th boot and it will no longer appear during my boot selector refresh (Chimera)

    Trial Boot OSX / Windows 7 / Ubuntu.

    Sorry for not being more precise.

    Since I haven't found anything on the Chimera side, I prefer to look for a way to delete the Windows loader from my HDD2 (dev/sdb) to keep the Chimera from my HDD1 (dev/sda). But any solution is welcome!

    Thank you for your quick responses!

    Best regards.

    P.S.: I am an IT professional, so feel free to use technical terms ;)
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    1. Anonymous user
       
      RE
      It's too complex for me.
      I sent a private message to a member who should be able to guide you on that.
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    2. Shining
       
      Thank you very much. I'm sure it's not very complicated, but I don't know which keywords to use for my Google search.
      In general, Google is my friend, but this time...

      That's kind of you, have a good evening!

      And anyway, it's not the end of the world!
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  4. phil2k Posted messages 10841 Registration date   Status Contributor Last intervention   2 339
     
    Hello

    The simplest thing is to remove it from the boot manager configuration.

    Touching the boot sector could mess up the partition table.
    It can be fixed, but still.

    Or, you could mark the W7 partition in question as inactive, using gparted or something similar...

    --
    "To fix something that doesn't work or makes too much noise, you just need to hit it with something that works better or makes more noise." The Shadoks
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    1. Shining
       
      I will try to convert it to non-active and see what it gives.
      Otherwise, I will have to do a formatted copy-paste and reattach the data, but that might take hours :'(

      Thank you for the suggestion.
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    2. Anonymous user
       
      Hi,

      I need some clarifications. I don't know Chimera... it's hard for me to help you on this point. Are you on Mac or PC? Please provide the exact configuration of the hard drives (by partition), so we can see clearly. A screenshot of the boot manager from one of your OS would be a good idea.
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    3. Shining
       
      Good evening
      Problem solved.
      A simple Hide hdd(1,1) was enough to hide my data partition on my HDD2.
      The MBR is still present, but it's hidden so in the end, it doesn't bother me too much.

      I managed this setup thanks to Chimera Wizard for those interested.

      To answer you Ikewdu, I am on PC, Chimera is a kind of grub (bootloader) for OSX. (by OSX I mean OSX for PC)
      The configuration of my partitions is as follows even though it won't help you now:
      hdd (0,1) OSX Mavericks
      hdd(0,2) Windows
      hdd(0,3) Ubuntu
      hdd(1,1) Data

      Thank you all for your participation!
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    4. Anonymous user
       
      Okay, consider it resolved. Bye.
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