Can't Get My New HDD to Become Boot Drive

Greetings, here is my system: Dell Dimension 4550 XP home with SP2. I added a seagate 200 gib hdd. Cloned my old 120 western digital (which came with the 4550)into the new hdd. Worked fine. Unplugged power to my old hdd and it booted fine with new hdd.

However, when I have power to them both, my system (XP) automatically makes my old hdd the boot drive (drive 0, disk C) not the new one.

I started with cable select -- as I've read elsewhere. Didn't work. Tried doing it with master/slave jumpers. Didn't work. I have my new hdd (the one I want be the primary) in the bottom drive slot with the long ata cord going into it. (short part of cord going into the old hdd). I think I've done everything "right."

Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks

 

Windows remembers the boot drive and hates two identical drives.

If it were my system, I'd confirm that the new drive boots with out the old drive attached. Shutdown and reattach the old drive, and then boot from a Windows 98 boot floppy and delete the partition from the old drive.

After that, you can boot into Windows with both drives attached and repartition and reformat the old drive.

 

Hello KUMA,

Thank you for choosing Acronis Disk Backup Software.

Please note that we recommend you to unplug one of the hard drives right after the disk cloning process has been finished, since keeping both original and cloned hard drives connected might cause different boot or drive letter assignment problems.

Thank you.
--
Kirill Omelchenko

 

Thanks for the feedback. I did unplug power to my old drive before I re-booted.

I'm not sure I'm technical enough to try to remove the partition from the old drive. I'll check on dell site.

 

Did you try making the old drive a Slave and connecting it to the Secondary IDE controller?

 

yes. ugh. i'll play around with it some more. it doesn't seem to like having 2 drives with an o/s on it. maybe it's a dell thing. ??

 

Hello Kuma,

Not sure how computer savvy you are (no offence intended) but it's probably worth reading through <Dan Goodell's section on Multi-boot partitions (plus the various sub-sections)>. I'm sure you'll find an appropriate "fix" there somewhere.

Regards

 

It's not a Windows thing, exactly.

In BIOS you can set the priority order for looking for Harddrives with bootstrap files. IN prioroty order, the BIOS will look for a bootstrap to start up a disk and find and load an operating system.

If you boot with two Windows drives (an original and a clone), then Windows will decide which is the system drive (with the bootstrap files) and which is the boot drive (with the OS files) -- it might split these assignments between the drives. So long as you power down after cloning, and disconnect one drive and have the other installed in a primary boot drive location (that the BIOS sees as primary boot location), then when you reboot, Windows will assign that drive as system and boot drive. You can then power down, leave the new boot drive in place and attach the other drive in another location (not the same one as the drive you just booted with), and when you boot, the Bios will go to the highest priority drive first and Windows will mark treat that drive as the boot and system drive and mark the other a regular drive -- it won't function as a boot and system drive unless you reformat or reclone onto it; it will have all the files on it but Windows won't treat it as a boot drive.

However, you can confuse things if you boot with one drive attached and then power down and connect the other drive in a higher priority boot location. Then when you power up, Windows will try to treat that drive as having the boot strap and the other drive as the system drive -- and that gets very messy.

sh

 

Cloning with TI seems to have its own unique set of problems, whereas Imaging then Restoring seems to be a more successful process. If you can do an Image/Restore instead of a Clone, your problem might disappear. This would require a third drive to hold the image - I don't recommend the Secure Zone, it just may add other problems.

If you must do a Clone then there is a better program out there, but you will have to PM me for more info.

 

Thanks to everyone who has replied. Hate to admit it, but it was operator error. I thought the drive master/slave jumper settings were the same for the seagate and the western digital. Wrong. Once I sorted this out, I got my new drive to be c/boot drive and my old one d. The cloned drive is working fine so far. I haven't checked everything, but all my programs seem to be working just fine.