WOOHOO I figured it out. It was my root device. http://www.openbsd.org/faq/faq8.html#Bootloader
boot -a allowed me to chose a different root device. I didn't realize that was going on but after booting several times I realized there was a line that said root_device wd1a thanks to the FAQ maintainer! On 6/2/06, John Brahy <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > I've got two drives in a OpenBSD 3.9 amd64 server. one that used to be the > root drive in an old 3.8 system and a new drive that I've installed a > fresh copy of OpenBSD 3.9. > > I want to boot up on just one of the drives but for some reason when I put > the second drive in the server it tries to take over the root drive. I've > tried switching the SATA cables between them and changing the boot option > for boot hd0a:/bsd and hd1a:/bsd and I get the same errors. > > I attempted to find a way to make the secondary drive not bootable by > booting up on my Official OpenBSD 3.9 CD and running a shell and then > fdisking it, but I didn't find anywhere I could turn the bootable flag off. > > Any suggestions on what I can do? > > Thanks, > > John