Hi there,
My hard drive recently began failing (wouldn't kick on during boot up process, makes clicking noises, etc). I decided to replace this drive with a new one. Here's the "OLD" configuration:
DRIVE 1: 250GB SATA Drive (boot drive, drive that failed, contained only OS and program files)
-contains 2 partitions, C and D
--C is a Windows XP partition
--D is a Windows Vista partition
DRIVE 2: 250GB IDE Drive (drive used for data, documents, pictures, etc)
So I was dual booting the drive with XP and Vista. I bought a 500GB SATA drive (DRIVE 3) as a replacement for DRIVE 1. Since the new drive is bigger, I decided to copy all of the personal non-OS data from DRIVE 2 (IDE) to DRIVE 3, and use DRIVE 2 as my new OS drive and continue the dual boot setup of XP and Vista. So my NEW configuration would be:
DRIVE 2: 250GB IDE Drive (only OS and program files)
-2 partitions, C and D
--C -> Windows XP partition
--D -> Windows Vista partition
DRIVE 3: 500GB SATA Drive (data, documents, pictures, etc)
The copying to DRIVE 3 went without incident.
So, I disconnected DRIVE 1 and DRIVE 3, and used my XP installation disk to run the XP setup program on DRIVE 2 (IDE). The setup program identifies the drive and its old partitions (I had 2 on it). I selected to delete the partitions and create 2 new partitions, 1 for each OS. I formatted the first new partition for XP, and then setup begins "Copying the files" to this new partition C.
It gets through the file copying without incident and then says it must reboot to continue installation. After the reboot, however, the hard drive fails to boot anything and the CD then runs again, starting the installation process over again from the beginning. The BIOS is set to boot the hard disk first.
I'm not sure what the issue is, it seems like the IDE drive does not register during the BIOS startup as a bootable device? I'm less familiar with the whole MBR / boot sector part of things. Is there something I need to do to make the system boot from that physical drive?
As a side note, if I reconnect DRIVE 1, I can still run both XP and Vista (once the drive works properly anyway) and can see all 3 drives in Vista's Disk Management tool when they are all connected. Just in case I need to download or run anything from Windows to fix it.
Sorry to be so long winded, any help would be appreciated!
-Mike-
My hard drive recently began failing (wouldn't kick on during boot up process, makes clicking noises, etc). I decided to replace this drive with a new one. Here's the "OLD" configuration:
DRIVE 1: 250GB SATA Drive (boot drive, drive that failed, contained only OS and program files)
-contains 2 partitions, C and D
--C is a Windows XP partition
--D is a Windows Vista partition
DRIVE 2: 250GB IDE Drive (drive used for data, documents, pictures, etc)
So I was dual booting the drive with XP and Vista. I bought a 500GB SATA drive (DRIVE 3) as a replacement for DRIVE 1. Since the new drive is bigger, I decided to copy all of the personal non-OS data from DRIVE 2 (IDE) to DRIVE 3, and use DRIVE 2 as my new OS drive and continue the dual boot setup of XP and Vista. So my NEW configuration would be:
DRIVE 2: 250GB IDE Drive (only OS and program files)
-2 partitions, C and D
--C -> Windows XP partition
--D -> Windows Vista partition
DRIVE 3: 500GB SATA Drive (data, documents, pictures, etc)
The copying to DRIVE 3 went without incident.
So, I disconnected DRIVE 1 and DRIVE 3, and used my XP installation disk to run the XP setup program on DRIVE 2 (IDE). The setup program identifies the drive and its old partitions (I had 2 on it). I selected to delete the partitions and create 2 new partitions, 1 for each OS. I formatted the first new partition for XP, and then setup begins "Copying the files" to this new partition C.
It gets through the file copying without incident and then says it must reboot to continue installation. After the reboot, however, the hard drive fails to boot anything and the CD then runs again, starting the installation process over again from the beginning. The BIOS is set to boot the hard disk first.
I'm not sure what the issue is, it seems like the IDE drive does not register during the BIOS startup as a bootable device? I'm less familiar with the whole MBR / boot sector part of things. Is there something I need to do to make the system boot from that physical drive?
As a side note, if I reconnect DRIVE 1, I can still run both XP and Vista (once the drive works properly anyway) and can see all 3 drives in Vista's Disk Management tool when they are all connected. Just in case I need to download or run anything from Windows to fix it.
Sorry to be so long winded, any help would be appreciated!
-Mike-