New drive came up as F: instead of C:

[questionz_99]

I just installed a 120G IDE hard drive, setting it as the master and
moving my existing 14G drive to the second position on the cable and
setting it as the slave.

But for some reason, XP decided to set the new drive BEHIND the old
one. The 14G is still partitioned as C: and D:, the CDRW is E: and the
new 120G drive is F: G: and H:.

Now the system boots to the F: drive. Is there any way I can change the
setup so the new drive is the C: drive? Or do I have to wipe everything
out on both drives and start over?

 

[Rod Speed]

I just installed a 120G IDE hard drive, setting it as
the master and moving my existing 14G drive to the
second position on the cable and setting it as the slave.

But for some reason, XP decided to
set the new drive BEHIND the old one.

Thats the way XP does it unless you copy the original the right way.

The 14G is still partitioned as C: and D:, the CDRW
is E: and the new 120G drive is F: G: and H:.

Now the system boots to the F: drive. Is there any way
I can change the setup so the new drive is the C: drive?

Not easily.

Or do I have to wipe everything out on both drives and start over?

Thats the easiest way. I use True Image myself for the copy.

 

[Thomas Wendell]

Did you have an existing Windows installation on C. (the old)?
XP, when installing, detects existing an OS, it get the drive letters in use
from that and then set the new driveletters...

To have XP on the new disk as C:, disconnect the old drive, install XP anew
on the new drive, and THEN connect the old drive as slave...
Thus you'd get (I hope) C: on the new drive, probably also D: and E; F: as
CDRW, and the G: and H: on old drive

???????


--
Tumppi
Reply to group
=================================================
Most learned on nntp://news.mircosoft.com
Helsinki, Finland (remove _NOSPAM)
(translations from FI/SE not always accurate)
=================================================

 

[questionz_99]

Thomas:

You got it. I had SP1 on the old drive and wanted to install SP2 on the
new one. While formatting the new drive, I didn't pay attention when XP
named the new drive "F:". If I had, I probably would have doped out the
correct procedure.

I'll start over with the old drive disconnected.

Thanks.

 

[Bob Jones]

Uh oh. I installed XP on the new 120G drive (Partitioning as C:, D: and
E, then connected the old 14G drive. Windows booted and choked on the
old drive -- identified the two partitions (formerly C: and D
properly as G: and H:, but said they were unformatted.

I disconnected both drives, connected the old one alone -- and it would
no longer boot. I can't read the content at all.

So, what happened? Why could I no longer boot to the old drive, even
when I re-established it as the sole hard drive? Did XP trash the
content on the old drive when re-assigning drive letters? And if so,
why? That seems to be unnecessarily destructive. I was hoping to
leisurely copy over some files once everything was running properly.

I'll want to hook the old drive up again and use it as the slave. If I
boot to the XP install disc, will it give me the option to FDISK and
format the old drive again?

Thanks.

 

[Ron Reaugh]

Uh oh. I installed XP on the new 120G drive (Partitioning as C:, D: and
E, then connected the old 14G drive. Windows booted and choked on the
old drive -- identified the two partitions (formerly C: and D
properly as G: and H:, but said they were unformatted.

I disconnected both drives, connected the old one alone -- and it would
no longer boot. I can't read the content at all.

So, what happened? Why could I no longer boot to the old drive, even
when I re-established it as the sole hard drive? Did XP trash the
content on the old drive when re-assigning drive letters? And if so,
why? That seems to be unnecessarily destructive. I was hoping to
leisurely copy over some files once everything was running properly.

I'll want to hook the old drive up again and use it as the slave. If I
boot to the XP install disc, will it give me the option to FDISK and
format the old drive again?

There's likely more to the story. So tell us.

 

[Bob Jones]

I forgot to back up one little folder, if that's what you're talking
about. Otherwise, you've got the details.

 

[craigm]

I forgot to back up one little folder, if that's what you're talking
about. Otherwise, you've got the details.

There should be some details about changing drive jumpers, or using
cable select. You are not providing all the details and making others
assume exactly what you did (each and every step should be described).

You don't indicate if the BIOS saw the drive upon boot.

Does boot.ini on the drive you are booting from contain the correct
information? (no, I can't help you make it right.)

Some useful info about boot.ini:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;289022
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;314081

Consider downloading a bootable Linux CD and seeing if you can browse
the hard drive with it.

craigm

 

[Rod Speed]

Uh oh. I installed XP on the new 120G drive
(Partitioning as C:, D: and E, then connected the old
14G drive. Windows booted and choked on the old drive

That shouldnt have happened, you must have done something wrong.

-- identified the two partitions (formerly C: and D properly as G: and H:,

Thats normal.

but said they were unformatted.

And that isnt.

I disconnected both drives, connected the old one alone
-- and it would no longer boot. I can't read the content at all.

That isnt either.

So, what happened? Why could I no longer boot to the old
drive, even when I re-established it as the sole hard drive?

You must have stuffed something up.

Did XP trash the content on the old drive when re-assigning drive letters?

Nope, that works fine.

And if so, why? That seems to be unnecessarily destructive.

Yes, it wasnt XP that did that.

I was hoping to leisurely copy over some
files once everything was running properly.

That works fine, I often do it like that.

I'll want to hook the old drive up again and use it as the slave.

That should have been fine too.

If I boot to the XP install disc, will it give me the
option to FDISK and format the old drive again?

You dont need to boot the XP CD to do that,
you can do that in disk management.

Its likely you have a problem with a flakey cable
or power connector tho so you should fix that first.

You did change the jumpers for the new config didnt you ?
You may have got the system seriously confused by using
a combination of cable select for the new drive and master
jumpering on the old drive or something.

 

[Bob Jones]

Well, here are more details:

When I re-booted with the new setup, the BIOS recognized both drives.
When XP booted, it found the old drive but said the partitions were not
formatted. When I re-booted again, my BIOS no longer recognized the old
drive.

I can re-create this process endlessly by following the same procedure
-- remove the old drive, boot to XP on the new one; hook up the old
drive as a slave, boot to XP, which will recognizes the partitions on
the old drive but says they are unformatted.

I used the correct jumper settings when connecting my drives. When I
encountered problems, I tried cable select, correctly setting it on
both drives. That didn't help.

I tried a different cable. That didn't work either.

Presently, I can not boot to the old drive, even when it is alone on
the cable. BIOS doesn't find it. I tried a Win98 boot disc, and could
access the drive but not the files. Can't recall the exact error
message, but I believe it was similar to that in XP -- referencing one
or more unformatted partitions.

For whatever reason, it looks like I have corrupt partitions on the old
drive. Don't know why it happened, and it hardly matters at this point.
I'll look around for some recovery software -- seems like that's the
only way to salvage the contents of the old drive. Meanwhile, I had a
3-day-old backup, so I lost only a few documents that I'll miss.

Further, I'll look into ghosting software to protect the contents of
the new drive.

Thanks to all for your suggestions.

 

[Rod Speed]

Well, here are more details:

When I re-booted with the new setup, the BIOS recognized both drives.
When XP booted, it found the old drive but said the partitions were not
formatted. When I re-booted again, my BIOS no longer recognized the old
drive.

That last sentence is the evidence of some fundamental
problem with a bad cable or bad jumpering etc, the drive
no longer being visible at the bios level.

I can re-create this process endlessly by following the same
procedure -- remove the old drive, boot to XP on the new one;
hook up the old drive as a slave, boot to XP, which will recognizes
the partitions on the old drive but says they are unformatted.

Thats likely because something got stomped on on the old drive.

XP will say a partition is unformatted if
it sees something bad in the MFT etc.

I used the correct jumper settings when connecting my drives.
When I encountered problems, I tried cable select, correctly
setting it on both drives. That didn't help.

Yeah, it wont help now that something got stomped on.

You're going to have to fix that problem
before XP will see the partitions as valid now.

I tried a different cable. That didn't work either.

Presently, I can not boot to the old drive, even
when it is alone on the cable. BIOS doesn't find it.

Must be something pretty bad there somewhere to get that effect.

Try one of the power connectors off one of the optical drives.

I tried a Win98 boot disc, and could access the drive

Thats interesting. That likely indicates that the drive is quite
flakey and that the mechanism the boot disk uses is different
enough to what the bios uses to at least get it seen a bit.

but not the files. Can't recall the exact error message,
but I believe it was similar to that in XP -- referencing
one or more unformatted partitions.

The Win98 boot disk doesnt do that. You
normally just get the Abort Retry Fail popup.

For whatever reason, it looks like I have corrupt partitions on the old drive.

Its worse than that if the bios cant see the drive anymore.

It doesnt care about corrupt partitions.

Don't know why it happened, and it hardly matters at this point.
I'll look around for some recovery software

Not a good idea until you the bios sees it reliably.

-- seems like that's the only way to salvage the contents of the old drive.

Yes, but you'll need to get the bios to see it reliably first.

Meanwhile, I had a 3-day-old backup, so

< I lost only a few documents that I'll miss.

Further, I'll look into ghosting software
to protect the contents of the new drive.

Thanks to all for your suggestions.

No problem, thats what this newsgroup is for.