Hard Drive Wont Format

[Ami]

Hi, got a new bigger harddrive and reinstalled programs etc, i set it as a
slave and the old as a master, now ive got the slave ready i want to format
the master and turn it to a slave,

im using dual boot at the moment, but will want the slave to boot
automatically which should happen once i format the master, if not i know
about removing the second line in boot.ini

i know about the jumper settings and can change those, question is will XP
have any probs as it was installed on a slave drive and now will be a
master?

secondly i cant format the master at all i tried using the disk mamagement
feature but the thing is greyed out same as partioning, but on the slave i
can, ive used the right click on c: and selected format but at the end it
says it cant

any ideas how i can format the master harddrive?

 

[WinXP Blues]

Hi Ami,

I am so confused! Why don't you refer to the HD's as the
new and the old instead of Master and Slave because after
the first paragraph I am not sure if you are referring to
the old HD or the new HD as Master/Slave. Does anyone else
have the same problem I have in deciphering what Ami wants
to do?

Sleepless

 

[Brian]

XP will not let you format the boot device (master hard
drive) You will have to create a bootable floppy with
Fdisk and format on it. Or boot to the XP install cd and
use it's partioning section to repartion the drives.
I've never actually tried to flip flop master and slave
drives like this but I would suspect it's a rather tricky
operation for the above reasons... Good luck!

 

[Ami]

soz, about the wording, i got a new hardrive, which i have installed stuff
on to it and XP (faster and bigger) i did this while the new was a slave and
my old one a master, now i want to format the old one and turn it into a
slave, then can turn the new one into a master via jumpers

 

[WinXP Blues]

Hi Ami,

I assume you have data/other files on the old HD that you
want to keep, right? Why not do this:

Jumper the new HD as Master and the old HD as Slave.
Go into Bios and set the boot sequence to CD first, then
IDE0, then Floppy.

Put WinXP installation CD in the CDRom, restart the
computer.

Go through the installation process for WinXP.

Once WinXP is installed and operating correctly, (don't
forget to go back into Bios and change the boot sequence
back to IDE0 or floppy first, whichever you prefer, and
CDRom second or third) you can use Window Explorer to
access the old HD and copy all your data/other files onto
the new HD. After all the files have transferred correctly
to the new HD, use Window Explorer to format your old HD
and use it as a backup data storage. Good luck.

Sleepless

 

[D.Currie]

Hi, got a new bigger harddrive and reinstalled programs etc, i set it as a
slave and the old as a master, now ive got the slave ready i want to format
the master and turn it to a slave,

im using dual boot at the moment, but will want the slave to boot
automatically which should happen once i format the master, if not i know
about removing the second line in boot.ini

i know about the jumper settings and can change those, question is will XP
have any probs as it was installed on a slave drive and now will be a
master?

secondly i cant format the master at all i tried using the disk mamagement
feature but the thing is greyed out same as partioning, but on the slave i
can, ive used the right click on c: and selected format but at the end it
says it cant

any ideas how i can format the master harddrive?

You can't format the drive while you're booting from it. But before you do
that, take out the old drive, set the new one for master, and see if it
boots. When it doesn't, you'll know something went wrong when you made the
copy, and you can recover from the error. If you format that old drive
first, you won't have another chance todo the copying.

When you've got the new drive working, you can put the old drive in as a
slave and format it from within Windows.

 

[Frank]

Ami wrote:

| soz, about the wording, i got a new hardrive, which i have installed
| stuff on to it and XP (faster and bigger) i did this while the new
| was a slave and my old one a master, now i want to format the old one
| and turn it into a slave, then can turn the new one into a master via
| jumpers


Once the new drive has everything that you want on it take it out.
Using a w98 or comparable bootdisk run FDISK to delete the non
dos partition (old drive). Remove it and install the new drive.
(jumpered correctly). It should boot if it don't run a repair install.
Then install the old drive (jumpered correctly). Admin tools,
disk management, format the old drive.

 

[Frank]

Ami wrote:

| Hi, got a new bigger harddrive and reinstalled programs etc, i set it
| as a slave and the old as a master, now ive got the slave ready i
| want to format the master and turn it to a slave,
|
| im using dual boot at the moment, but will want the slave to boot
| automatically which should happen once i format the master, if not i
| know about removing the second line in boot.ini
|
| i know about the jumper settings and can change those, question is
| will XP have any probs as it was installed on a slave drive and now
| will be a master?
|
| secondly i cant format the master at all i tried using the disk
| mamagement feature but the thing is greyed out same as partioning,
| but on the slave i can, ive used the right click on c: and selected
| format but at the end it says it cant
|
| any ideas how i can format the master harddrive?

The other post from me got jumbled up from cutting and pasting
and getting sent by mistake.
1) When every thing is transfered to the new drive.
2) Uninstall all IDE devices from device manager and then
physically remove them except for the old drive. This is
done to keep the drive letters from mixing up.
3) Using a win 98 type boot disk fdisk delete the non dos
partition. (old drive)
4) Re jumper the drives to your satisfaction.
5) If the new drive won't boot just run a install repair.
nothing will be lost.