Replacing SCSI drive (boot) with EIDE drive

[Guest]

I currently have a 9.1 GB SCSI HDD that works as my
boot drive. I would like to replace it with a 160 GB EIDE
HDD (on a controller card).

Western Digital drives now come with a utility to transfer all settings
from the old boot drive, to the new drive. I have already successfully transfered
all of the contents of the old to the new, but the computer refuses to boot from
it.

Steps taken so far.
1. Installed new 160Gb drive on controller card as master, temp drive letter assignement of I: (have 8 devices already attached, 2 SCSI HDD, 3 EIDE HDD,
1 SCSI CD-ROM, and 2 EIDE DVD-R's) Had to remove the extra SCSI drive for the power connector.

2. Partitioned, and formatted new drive using Western Digital drive software, and transfered all data from old boot drive to new.

3. Shut down system, removed boot drive SCSI ID 0. Re-attached old SCSI D: drive

4. Booted system and entered BIOS, changed boot options from SCSI to EIDE
saved/exited, rebooted.

System makes it through POST ok, see's all drives including new one at full capacity
(used LBA during format), but when it comes time to load Windows XP home, says system not found.

I have tried various combinations of settings in BIOS boot options to no avail.

Any help on this would be greatly appreciated.
P.S. Also tried DiskCopy v 4, no go at this station.

Thanks again

 

[D.Currie]

I currently have a 9.1 GB SCSI HDD that works as my
boot drive. I would like to replace it with a 160 GB EIDE
HDD (on a controller card).

Western Digital drives now come with a utility to transfer all settings
from the old boot drive, to the new drive. I have already successfully transfered
all of the contents of the old to the new, but the computer refuses to boot from
it.

Steps taken so far.
1. Installed new 160Gb drive on controller card as master, temp drive

letter assignement of I: (have 8 devices already attached, 2 SCSI HDD, 3
EIDE HDD,

1 SCSI CD-ROM, and 2 EIDE DVD-R's) Had to remove the extra SCSI drive for the power connector.

2. Partitioned, and formatted new drive using Western Digital drive

software, and transfered all data from old boot drive to new.

3. Shut down system, removed boot drive SCSI ID 0. Re-attached old SCSI D: drive

4. Booted system and entered BIOS, changed boot options from SCSI to EIDE
saved/exited, rebooted.

System makes it through POST ok, see's all drives including new one at full capacity
(used LBA during format), but when it comes time to load Windows XP home, says system not found.

I have tried various combinations of settings in BIOS boot options to no avail.

Any help on this would be greatly appreciated.
P.S. Also tried DiskCopy v 4, no go at this station.

Thanks again

The problem might be that your boot.ini is pointing to the scsi bus and not
to ide. There's a way to fix it from the recovery console, but offhand I
don't recall exactly what you need to do. But it should be easy enough to do
a search for.

 

[joust in jest]

If your new drive is NOT plugged into the IDE controller on your
motherboard, but IS plugged into a PCI IDE control card, then you have to
set your BIOS to boot from SCSI device.

steve

I currently have a 9.1 GB SCSI HDD that works as my
boot drive. I would like to replace it with a 160 GB EIDE
HDD (on a controller card).

Western Digital drives now come with a utility to transfer all settings
from the old boot drive, to the new drive. I have already successfully transfered
all of the contents of the old to the new, but the computer refuses to boot from
it.

Steps taken so far.
1. Installed new 160Gb drive on controller card as master, temp drive

letter assignement of I: (have 8 devices already attached, 2 SCSI HDD, 3
EIDE HDD,

1 SCSI CD-ROM, and 2 EIDE DVD-R's) Had to remove the extra SCSI drive for the power connector.

2. Partitioned, and formatted new drive using Western Digital drive

software, and transfered all data from old boot drive to new.

 

[R. C. White]

Hi, Ray.

I currently have a 9.1 GB SCSI HDD that works as my
boot drive

Me, too! Mine is an IBM SCSI HD on an Adaptec AHA-2930U2 host adapter. I
used to have several SCSI HDs, CDs, SyJets, etc., but now have nothing SCSI
except my boot drive. My mobo is an EPoX 8K3A+, with built-in HighPoint 372
RAID controller. My other two drives are ATA 100 and 133, attached to the
RAID controller, but not using any RAID functions - just faster IDE.

It sounds like your basic problem is the classic which we've seen ever since
Win2K arrived in February 2000. The usual symptom is a BSOD reporting Stop
0x7B, Inaccessible_Boot_Device, that pops up during Win2K/XP Setup, just
after all those files have been copied and the computer is ready to boot
into WinXP for the first time in GUI mode to continue installation.

The cause of the problem is that the WinXP CD-ROM does not include drivers
for your new HD/controller. WinXP Setup has enough smarts to do everything
up to the point where it boots from that HD for the first time. If you were
adding your new HD as a data drive, you could just install drivers like you
do for a printer or other device. But, if you want to use the new HD as the
BOOT DEVICE, then drivers for it must be integrated into WinXP during Setup.

First, find the drivers for your new HD and put them on a floppy diskette,
if they didn't come on a floppy. Have that floppy handy. Unplug (or
disable in the BIOS) all other hard drives except your new 160 drive. Set
the CD-ROM as the boot device in BIOS and insert the WinXP CD-ROM and
reboot. Early in the Setup phase, there will be a brief message at the
bottom of the screen to Press F6 if you need to install drivers for SCSI or
other mass storage devices. Press F6 quickly and then wait while a lot of
files get transferred. When Setup stops, there will be instructions for how
to use the floppy to install drivers for your EIDE controller from the
floppy. Once that is done, Setup will continue, including the reboot to GUI
mode to complete installation.

I know this is a headache - but it's not a new headache. As I said, we've
had to do it ever since Win2K if we have HD/controller/host adapters for
which the drivers are not on the Win2K/XP CD-ROM. I've had to do it myself
a dozen or more times as I've installed and upgraded Win2K, WinXP, Win2K3
Server, Longhorn...

Another thing to watch is to be VERY careful during those Setup screens.
It's VERY easy to just get into the rhythm and press Enter without noticing
which HD and partition you are telling Setup to use. Especially with
multiple HDs and partitions, drive LETTERS are reassigned and likely do not
match the letters that you are expecting! That's why it's important to
disconnect or disable any HDs that do not need to be involved in the Setup
process. Drive letters shown here are only temporary and probably will not
be the same as the permanent letters after you get WinXP installed. Also,
if Setup detects another Active (bootable) partition while installing WinXP,
it probably will let THAT partition keep drive letter C: and will assign the
new system partition on your new HD (which you expected to become C the
first available letter, which may be D: or E: or X:, depending on what is
plugged in at the time. WinXP will be quite comfy booting from Drive X:,
but we humans can get confused if it's not Drive C: - and there's no good
way to reassign the letter for the system partition, short of reinstalling.

It's not really all that hard to install WinXP on that big new HD with
drivers on a floppy - but it's also not hard to miss one little fork in the
road and wind up lost in the woods. :>( And having all the files, even in
the right places, does no good if the proper entries haven't been made in
the Registry, and if Setup has not been allowed to properly customize WinXP
to fit the current hardware configuration.

RC

 

[joust in jest]

R.C.:
But the OP isn't doing a clean install -- he ghosted the contents of the
old drive to the new drive via WD utility.

steve

 

[R. C. White]

Hi, Steve.

Yes, I know. But those ghosted contents know how to boot from the SCSI
drive. They don't know how to boot from EIDE. He has to run Setup again so
that it can detect the new hardware configuration and re-customize WinXP to
boot from the new drive/controller.

It's a bummer! If you know a shortcut, please let us all know.

RC

 

[Guest]

R.C. And joust,
First off, let me thank you both for your timely, and very informative
responses. Both have opened my eyes to what needs to be done, and more importantly 'why'.

This coming weekend I will attempt to use that information to get my boot drive switched over, and will post the results here. Again, thank you both very much.

- Ray