Cant get new drive to boot

[adl6009]

I started this over in apps and os's if you want to take a look http://www.sysopt.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&postid=967391#post967391 But the problem now is that I can not boot from the new drive.
I belive I got it all right when I was going through the maxblast software, and I can boot from the old drive. But when I set it up with the new drive as the master on the ide chain windows says-"Windows could not start because of a computer disk hardware configuration problem. Could not read from the selected boot disk. Check boot path and hardware. ..."
I suspect maxblast did not set the new drive with the correct mbr. All the data was properly transfered as I can read the drive when I boot from the old drive.
Whats the easy way out? I want to boot from the new drive and delete all data from the old drive and use it as a slave.
Windows xp home
old drive seagate barracuda 80 gig
new drive maxtor 120 gig ultra 9
dell demension 8200 2.2 p4
1/2 gig rdram
lots of other good stuff, not to mention my old computer that still works.
Thanks.

[Midknyte]

you double checked the jumpers to make sure, right? did you try cable select instead of master also?

it seems like it took hella long to do the transfer. are you sure that both drives are good? run the powermax diags just to make sure.

if both drives are good, then maybe you want to try another image software like drive image or ghost. since you have a seagate drive, you could also use their software provided that it supports winxp.

[adl6009]

Yes the jumpers are correct. Tried the cable select in the new drive as master config, no good. Nothing couold get the drive to boot. The bios sees both drives. Max blast sees em both. Windows will not boot from the new drive. Isn't the boot drive supposed to be some special kind of partition as indicated to the bios by the mbr? Maybe I'll try partition magic, I've never used it before, I'll just spend some time and read those wonderful help files.

This might be loading on your computer kinda slow, sorry about that. I am using my old 233 pentium to access the web duriing this period of crisis. :)

[BipolarBill]

Did the old drive have GoBack on it? If so, it must be removed before copying.

Ghost copies better than MaxBlast does.

[adl6009]

No go back.

Thanks for the help. Unfortunately that real world stuff had gotten in the way and I was unable to spend time on this. Monday is the day.
The last thing I found out working on it yesterday is that both drives are set as active on a primary partition. I can boot from the old drive when it is the master. With or without the other drive. The new drive wont boot at all. Alone or together with the other drive. The new drive also definately has the windows folder on it. As far as I know thats what you need. An active primary partition with windows. Does the drive need to be "named" c, I did not name it.
Anyway, maxtor tech support opens tomorow maybe I'll give the 800 number a try.

[BipolarBill]

It's no surprise that a hard drive from another PC won't boot on new hardware. We preach that fact every day at SysOpt.

[adl6009]

Hi Bill its a pleasure to hear from you again. But,

It's no surprise that a hard drive from another PC won't boot on new hardware. We preach that fact every day at SysOpt. PC
I don't know what you mean. Whats happening is I wanted to install a bigger faster drive, clone the old c drive and replace. For some reason the replace ain't working. I used maxblast to copy the original to the replacement but I can't boot from the replacement.
Anyway, didn't have time today, only 24 hours in my day you know. Maybe tuesday, I think I can get someone to throw in an extra hour between 2 and 3, lets call it maxtime so I can get some work on my maxtor done.:)

Thanks again to all who have helped.

[BipolarBill]

So you copied old drive to new and now the new drive won't boot? You never came right out and said that you had successfully copied it.

You should (finally) invest in Ghost. It's much better at this than Maxblast.

[Rocketmech]

If you can see and access all the files on the new HDD that you say are copied , its possible you could try a "repair reinstall" on the new drive . Maybe BPB or Midknyte have an opinion on this, since I've never tried it. Wouldn't hurt to try anyways. Here's a link for the 'how to' :

http://www.michaelstevenstech.com/XPrepairinstall.htm


* 1st, remove the old drive from the system beforehand. Set the new drive as Primary Master and place it on the end of the cable. Set the bios to boot from the CD.

As a note, I've always used Maxblast or WD's DataLifeguard successfully with the drives on seperate channels (Prim./Sec.), but I see no reason it shouldn't have worked on the same cable, other than being slow, which it was. ;)

[BipolarBill]

Actually, that might work. Just the same, I would choose the Recovery Console and then type in FIXMBR and then FIXBOOT.

[adl6009]

I had tried the maxblast fix the mbr utility, somewhere in the middle of this mess. That did not help.
I talked to maxtor tech support today and he said essentially 2 things
1. I should not have set up the new drive as the slave on the secondary ide channel when the master was an optical drive.
I am sure you guys knew that. I did too, but I didn't think of it.
2. Retail drive image software is more robust and more capable than maxblast. And if I have one try using that.

So I put the new drive in as a master on the second ide chain with the optical, as the slave. Old drive as the master on the primary. Used winxp to format new drive, I am now using drive image 2k2 to copy old to new. Its been runnig a good 2 hours now with a data transfer rate of 204 mb/min. Got another 2.5 hours to go. I guess I will be finishing this tomorow. Right now I plan on booting off the new drive and using it for awhile just to make sure its ok. Then I'll have to figure out what to d with the old drive. Maybe I'll have to build that computer I've been wanting to put next to the stereo downstairs... :t

[adl6009]

Partial success- Drive image copied the drive. Now my 120gig drive has a 79 gig partition and a 39 gig unallocated space. Not only that but I had difficulty at first booting from the new drive.
1 Boot problem- The system was hanging on the dell flash screen and then saying it could not locate hard drive 0. Then I would go to the boot menu and select the c drive and boot up. Maxtor tech support had me go into the bios and turn off the option to detect hard drive 1. Now she boots.
2. Partition problem. I guess drive image created a partition the same size as the old hard drive leaving the remaining 39 gigs as unallocated space. I tried using partition magic, looked easy enough. Just slide the slider to include the whole drive and go. Well I rebooted and a screen for partition magic opened and said it was executing a a batch file, then the bsod showed up. I had to reboot. Again the bsod. Upon reboot I could not push any key to cancel the partition magic batch file, so another bsod. I eventually hiy f8 and selected booting with an earlier config that worked.
Lots of fun this swapping out hard drive in xp isn't it?

So now my question is how do I get the unallocated space to become part of my c drive.

Thanks for putting up with my story. It helps to vent and no one around here really understand me. :confused:

[BipolarBill]

Make the Partition Magic Rescue disks and do it from DOS.

[adl6009]

And I'll bet ya you are right. Funny thing is, I can't do that. Seems that this is the first time I tried to use the floppy drive and I can't write to it or read from it. It's recognized by windows but thats it. So I tried writing the rescue disk to a network floppy drive, sorry, won't work. So then I figured what the hell, I got that old floppy drive I've been using as a paper weight for 5 years or so, I'll just throw that in. Nope. Can't find it.
I did have some success though. I used p magic to create a logical partition with the 30 gig section. Then i tried to combine the 2 partitions, Sorry, good ol' BSOD again.
I reverted to the last config that worked, again.

Hey, don't get me wrong here. I don't really mind that all this is happening. It would be nice if I could drop in the drive copy and go. But what the heck. I learn something new every day. I am meeting the challenge with a positive attitude and the original receipt in a nearby drawer. Tommorow is another day, if all goes well. (And my newest favorite from an ad poster for a cartoon) If he's our future, we're history.