changing the primary hard drive, and now I cannot view my old one

[Guest]

Just got an old PC from work about the same age as myne so I am just mixing
and matching to get the best combination. I was hoping to use its Hard Drive
as it is double the size of my original one. When i plug in the other hard
drive as my new primary drive as it already has Windows XP on it, it starts
up and works fine. However I cannot view my other old hard drive, when i
right click on My Computer and go to Manage and then the Disk Management, I
can see it there, however it will not let me assign a drive letter to it,
there is only delete the partition.

Any suggestions of how I can activate my old hard drive so then it will work?

Thanks
Alastair

 

[Richard in AZ]

Just got an old PC from work about the same age as myne so I am just mixing
and matching to get the best combination. I was hoping to use its Hard Drive
as it is double the size of my original one. When i plug in the other hard
drive as my new primary drive as it already has Windows XP on it, it starts
up and works fine. However I cannot view my other old hard drive, when i
right click on My Computer and go to Manage and then the Disk Management, I
can see it there, however it will not let me assign a drive letter to it,
there is only delete the partition.

Any suggestions of how I can activate my old hard drive so then it will work?

Thanks
Alastair

Have you jumper the old drive as a "slave"?

 

[Guest]

What do you mean by that and how would I find out?

 

[DL]

IDE drives have a series of pins on the front, next to the ide cable
connection.
You 'jumper' two pins to set your hd up as, master, slave or cable select
Master being when its the only or primary hd, slave being when you already
have a Master
Usually there is a diagram on the hd, if not visit your hd manu site for
instructions

PS If the hd from the other PC already had winxp on it and it booted
straight off, on your PC, this was a minor miracle as usually you have to
perform a repair installation.

 

[Patrick Keenan]

What do you mean by that and how would I find out?

That would be a "no".

IDE hard disks have jumpers, for Master, slave, or Cable Select. On each
channel, there can be only one Master and one slave. For Cable Select,
the primary drive is on the far end of the cable if there are two drives on
one cable. You can't mix master/slave and cable select.

You find out what the settings are by looking at the jumpers on the drive;
you should see letters like M, S, or CS near the jumpers. Take the drive
model numbers to the drive manufacturer's website to find charts if you need
them. Often, if you get it wrong, the system won't start at all.

And yes, it's quite surprising that the other XP drive booted at all. It
must have been in a very similar machine.

HTH
-pk

 

[Anna]

IDE hard disks have jumpers, for Master, slave, or Cable Select. On each
channel, there can be only one Master and one slave. For Cable Select,
the primary drive is on the far end of the cable if there are two drives
on one cable. You can't mix master/slave and cable select.

You find out what the settings are by looking at the jumpers on the drive;
you should see letters like M, S, or CS near the jumpers. Take the drive
model numbers to the drive manufacturer's website to find charts if you
need them. Often, if you get it wrong, the system won't start at all.

And yes, it's quite surprising that the other XP drive booted at all. It
must have been in a very similar machine.

HTH
-pk

Patrick:
Hopefully your instructions re jumpering & connecting the OP's HDDs will
solve his or her problem. I'm going to add a bit to your post (below) in an
effort to further (hopefully) assist Alastair.

But I wanted to first comment on your final comment that "it's quite
surprising that the other XP drive booted at all". Based on our experience
in transferring a HDD from one system to another system we're no longer
surprised that in a fair amount of these cases the system *will* boot with
the transferred HDD connected without any problem *regardless* of the fact
that the destination system is a completely different one from the system
where the HDD formerly resided. We've never really found any common
denominator to explain this.

So our general advice to a user who is embarking on this process of
transferring a HDD from one system to another is that before undertaking a
Repair install of the OS after the HDD has been installed in the destination
system, try an initial boot with that installed HDD. You may be lucky. If no
go, then of course a Repair install of the OS will be in order.

Alastair:
I trust with Patrick's instructions you understand the HDD jumpering
configuration.

Incidentally, we're assuming in all this the your HDDs are PATA and not SATA
HDD ones. I notice you never say. So if one or the other is a SATA HDD stop
right now...

And we're also assuming that there's no problem with your "old" HDD in that
it's non-defective.

1. Your transferred HDD should be connected as Primary Master.
2. With the machine shut down, disconnect your "old" HDD.
3. Boot *only* with the new PM HDD connected.
4. Shut down the machine and reconnect your old HDD. We assume it will be
connected as a Slave to the PM but it can also be connected on the Secondary
IDE channel of your motherboard as either Master or Slave. (I trust you know
what I'm talking about).
Again, make sure your HDD jumper connections are correct for your
configuration.
5. Boot with both drives connected. Hopefully you shouldn't have any problem
with the recognition of that secondary HDD and a drive letter will be
assigned to it. If not, try Disk Management again.
Anna

 

[Guest]

I have selected the correct Jumpers, and still I cannot view my old hard
drive. However if I choose the secondary hard drive to be universal instead
of a secondary hard drive, what appears to be a bios message comes up at
start up saying

Reboot and Select Proper boot device
Or Insery Boot Media in selected Boot device

I am assuming this is the conflict message that you were expecting. But
still when I go to My Computer and then manage, on the old hard drive in Disk
Management I can only select delete partition and not to change its drive
letter.

Just to give you a bit more info, my old hard drive which I am trying to use
as my secondary is a Western Digital WD200 20GB, and I am trying to get the
Maxtor DiamondMac Plus 8 40GB ATA 133HDD drive as the primary.

Any more suggestions?
Alastair

 

[Patrick Keenan]

I have selected the correct Jumpers, and still I cannot view my old hard
drive.

If you can't see it, then you likely do not have the jumpers selected
correctly. It appears you haven't found the magic combination for that
pair of drives yet.

If you connect only the old hard drive, does the system recognise it? The
object here is to determine whether its partition has been damaged or not -
if it has been damaged enough, or if XP doesn't recognise the partition
type, XP may be unable to mount it, won't allow a letter assignment and will
only offer the option of removing the partition. This behaviour will also
present if you attach Linux or Mac-created disks, as well.

Does the BIOS recognise its presence in any case? If it doesn't, XP won't
either. Don't wait for the system to boot to Windows; check the BIOS each
time.

Try setting the drives to Cable Select, with the drive you want to boot from
at the end of the cable.

However, not all BIOS's support Cable Select.

Try putting the old drive on the secondary channel in place of the CD (if
there is a secondary channel). In that case, set both as Master. Later,
you can re-connect the CD as Slave.

However if I choose the secondary hard drive to be universal instead
of a secondary hard drive, what appears to be a bios message comes up at
start up saying

I think I have never seen a drive with a setting of "universal".

The standard options are Master, Slave, and Cable Select. Sometimes you
will see other jumpers like SP (Slave Present), which means
master-with-slave attached.

What works varies from drive to drive, and if you're mixing brands, results
may vary further. Sometimes, single-drive systems where the drives have
Master jumpers won't boot unless the Master jumper is *removed*, just to
confuse things... WD drives are sometimes like this. Check the drive
documentation.

As Anna notes, this assumes that these drives are ATA - IDE and not SATA.
The difference is obvious when you look at the drive data cables (the power
cables and connectors are very different too). ATA cables are 40 or 80
conductor and wide, SATA cables are narrow - about 1/4" wide. The
connectors are not similar and can't be confused.

SATA systems don't use jumpers in the same way at all, because there is only
one drive per channel. The jumpers are for other purposes not related to
drive ID.

Then there are SCSI drives, which use drive ID jumpers rather than
master/slave. These are now seldom seen on desktop systems. You
specify the boot device in the SCSI BIOS by SCSI ID.

Reboot and Select Proper boot device
Or Insery Boot Media in selected Boot device

That usually means you have conflicting jumper settings. If you have two
drives set as master or slave, it won't boot.

I am assuming this is the conflict message that you were expecting. But
still when I go to My Computer and then manage, on the old hard drive in
Disk
Management I can only select delete partition and not to change its drive
letter.

Just to give you a bit more info, my old hard drive which I am trying to
use
as my secondary is a Western Digital WD200 20GB, and I am trying to get
the
Maxtor DiamondMac Plus 8 40GB ATA 133HDD drive as the primary.

There are model numbers on the drive label, go to the WD and Maxtor sites,
search for the charts for those model numbers. This is an important
starting point.

HTH
-pk