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hdd problem

Discussion in 'Hardware' started by rick, 30 Jan 2006.

  1. rick

    rick What's a Dremel?

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    i've just had to do a total reinstall and while i was doing it i thor i'd add a new hdd the only problem is my pc wont load with the 2nd drive connected. bios can detect the drive and i've set it so it doesnt try to boot from it and i know it works as i've had it working in my other pc. when i try to boot up the pc it gets to the black windows xp loading screen but then the screen just goes blank.
    can anyone help? i'm stuck with a 40gb hdd and its not fun
     
  2. MonkeyTurnip

    MonkeyTurnip What's a Dremel?

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    check the jumpers on the HDD's and whick plug on the cable they are on, dont put them on cable select as ive found that doesnt always wor with certian mobo's,
     
  3. rick

    rick What's a Dremel?

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    atm its on the last plug on the cable with no jumper (cable select) altho i've had it set to master before with no luck. i've got it pluged straigt into the mobo inplace of my cd drive atm as when it was on with my other hdd even bios couldnt detect it.
    would my os have anything to do with it? its win xp home edition
     
  4. Superlunchbox

    Superlunchbox What's a Dremel?

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    Try setting the second drive as slave. then reboot. If your getting into windows on the one drive, with the other one plugged in and it's just not showing up, and your using tweakXP, you have to turn on the other drive letters in tweakXP's settings. Had this problem myself. Also, try the second drive on a different IDE header. Like on a cable by itself, set to master. Try every combination you can think of. Try changing out your IDE cables too. I've had a drive work as master with a cable before, then added a slave and the slave didn't work. Changed cable and everything worked fine.
     
  5. rick

    rick What's a Dremel?

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    i'm still having no luck with this hdd i've tryed every combo i can think of with no luck but it still works fine in my other pc.
    the only thing i can think of is the file system on my other pc is NTFS and its FAT32 on this one, could that be the problem?
    if it is is there any way of formating it to FAT32 on the other pc as thats the only pc that will recognise that hard drive.
     
  6. Superlunchbox

    Superlunchbox What's a Dremel?

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    Hrmm, did you try changing the cables? Also, when you "Disabled it as a boot device" in the bios, you didn't disable it completely did you? It sounds like whats happening is that it's trying to boot into windows, and it's finding 2 file systems, so it's getting confused as to which one to use. BTW are you using Windows XP? Are both hard drives IDE? Also, does the primary hard drive you loaded with windows work by itself? You need to isolate the problem to a component. Find out what does work, then isolate what doesn't. If the new HDD you just loaded with xp works and you know the old one works too, then it has to be a booting problem with windows. Do you need to recover any information from the old hard drive? If not, then just throw in the XP disk, boot up with only the old hard drive in there, and format it for NTFS. Don't load windows on it, and then shutdown. Then throw the new one in there, set it as master on one channel, and the other as master on another channel, and your CD-rom to slave. Reboot, and you should be fine. If you need to recover your data, then i'd recommend trying to back it up with a DVD burner if it's not too cumbersome. Otherwise, i'm at a loss as to why it's trying to boot into both. Cheers.

    P.S. The NTFS thing could be the problem. You can convert a hard drive from FAT32 to NTFS, but not the other way around. For the record you shouldn't be using FAT32 as NTFS is waaay better. Better permissions, and more reliable.
     
    Last edited: 5 Feb 2006
  7. rick

    rick What's a Dremel?

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    there both ide, one has win xp (fat32 file system) on it and the other just has some mp3's saved to it(ntfs file system). i've tryed different ide cables and even tryed doing a fresh install of win 98 on one of my older pc's but it just said it was unable to use the drive.
     
  8. Superlunchbox

    Superlunchbox What's a Dremel?

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    Okay, to the best of my knowledge NTFS is completely incompatible with WIN98, so don't go that route. I'd reload windows XP with NTFS, and that should fix the problem. If you have any problems, feel free to PM me.
    P.S. Check your PM's.
     
  9. wharrad

    wharrad Minimodder

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    How up-to-date is you XP? Pre-SP1 XP didn't like drives over the 120GB(ish) range. So if it's a fresh install and you just haven't downloaded the service packs, it might be that
     
  10. crazydeep74

    crazydeep74 What's a Dremel?

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    Windows XP will work fine with larger drive but will only read 136GB. Make sure the Slave in on the second plug on the IDE and the master is on the first. Make sure there the same cable. Download Ultimate Boot CD and Wipe both drives with D-ban. Run diognostics and reformat both with NTFS. Windows will detect the OS, just select Keep FIle system as is during install. DOUBLE CHECK EVERYTHING
     

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