New HardDrive Problems

Hey all, a hardrive is starting to go. I bought a new hard drive to replace it. The old / current drive is a western digital, while the new / replacement drive is a Seagate. I copied all the files with the included software.

However, Windows is installed on drive D. Drive D is the first drive on a different drive. Under disk management, this is my config:


When I put the new hard drive in, with the same exact jumper settings, etc. after cmos and <b>before</b> the boot menu, it says "please insert disk" or something to that extent. i have been working on this problem off and on for 2-3 months and nothing gives. any light you can shed on this will be helpful. i will be able to work on it and have some down time on thursday...

thanks

 

Hi

The unlabelled partition may be out of place. It seems to be partitioned, but not formatted. I would either format it or use a partitioning manipulation program like Partition Magic or Partition Manager to turn it into unpartitioned freespace (if you don't already have one, I really think you need to get one with that many partitions).

The D: drive only has 2% unused space left. I think Win XP can cope with these sorts of low levels, but it would be ringing alarm bells for me. If you changed the unlabelled drive into freespace you could move that freespace to the end of drive D: and increase it's size. When using the partition manipulation software, just run one task at a time, if it has a lot of tasks to carry out and crashes, you may lose all your data (Example, you may need to move 2 partitions to put the freespace at the end of the D: drive. Move one partition at a time, then as another task, increase the size of the D: partition. If you put all those tasks into one tasklist you may be headed for disaster).

As I read it, you want to make the HDD with the boot drive (D: ) as the primary master (HD 0) and so make it the C: drive. I would set it as the primary master (if any other drives are attached to that cable check they are set as slave), then boot to the Windows CD and run a repair/reinstall. [You will need to know your administrator password (something I found out too late )]

Matt

 

Only thoughts are that either the first hard disk – disk 0 – is not the first boot device in the bios, or when you copied the hard drive you did not also copy the MBR. Some bios’ are able to compensate and bypass the MBR if it is not found and go straight for the ntloader, which sounds like what is happening. Also check that the primary partition is set as Active.

You can usually write a new MBR to the drive with the fixmbr command from the recovery console, although I’m not sure with your OS on the second drive if it will target the correct hard drive. I should think it will as the ntloader is on the first drive. No harm will be done if it writes one to the second hard drive, so worth a try.
http://www.wown.com/j_helmig/wxprcons.htm

Strange setup you’ve got there and a bit of a drive letter nightmare in My Computer. Just wondering if there’s a good reason for it?

 

I don't recognize the program that was used to describe your configuration, and that may be important because the hard disks aren't shown.

But why not exchange the ribbon cables (or the connectors) to make the present d: disk 0 primary, c: (no longer d: ), since you wish to boot from it, and the other drive slave? Assuming they're IDE / ATA (since you mention jumpers) the BIOS will then make the system disk also the boot disk.

You may still have to use recovery console to fix booting, although with FAT32 fdisk should do this - activate the boot partition on the new C: and fix the MBR if necessary.