Hard drive had to be Initialized

I finally "bit the bullet" and updated to winXP sp2 I have been reading quite a bit on this forum about installing a new "main" drive and have never seen this problem come up. Using win98se I would simply switch drives after setting to "master" , swapping the cables and the drive would be seen. Not so with winXP. I switched drives and was going to do a "recover" using the rescue disk. The rescue disk never showed my new drive. I decided to put the old drive back and install the new drive as a "backup". I already had a backup drive and so it was a matter of changing to "slave' and switching cables. The rescue disk still couldn't see the drive, so I booted to windows and "Explorer" could not see the drive either. I looked in "Device Manager" and the drive was shown as " this device is working properly". I went into disk management and intialized the disk and I could now see it in explorer. and with the rescue disk.
My question is..... if my "main" drive goes dead how can I install (intialize) a new drive without winXP running?
I am using TI 9 build 3,677 I hope somebody can help me.

 

You would used the bootable Rescue TI cd, boot with it and when its menu comes up, use the "Add New Drive" feature. If you haven't already made the CD, run TI and look among the menu items for something like "Create bootable Rescue media".

 

He was using the rescue CD.

If the Add New Disk command doesn't help you can always boot up with the XP installation CD and let it run to the stage that allows you to partition the disk. Let it set up a partiton for C and when it wants to start copying the XP files just turn off the computer.

Actually, this is the way I always do the install of a new disk. I setup the partition space for C only and then restore my C image to the partition. I then use XP's disk management to setup any other partitions in the unallocated space.

I always do the non-quick format of the space even though restoring the image will wipe it out. This gives me increased confidence the new disk is working well.

 

I did some tests on the before and after situation. Basically, initializing is just writing a MBR to the new empty HD. If you write a MBR to the HD before you allow Windows to see the HD then you aren't asked to initialize.

If your main HD dies and you replace it with a new empty HD you can simply restore your image using the TI boot CD. TI writes a MBR to the HD during the restore process whether you tick Restore MBR or not. Initialization isn't needed. Don't worry.

Seekforever and I do things in very similar ways. I partition a new HD with Partition Magic prior to restoring an image. Partitioning creates a MBR too.

 

Thanks for the help guys, I am learning a bit about XP.
Brian K the problem was that I could't see a new hard drive to "recover" to with the rescue cd. But once the drive was initialized I can see it.
I am now using the new drive as a second internal drive and it works fine. Do you know if it is possible to now swap that drive with my main drive and do a "recovery".

If the Add New Disk command doesn't help you can always boot up with the XP installation CD and let it run to the stage that allows you to partition the disk. Let it set up a partiton for C and when it wants to start copying the XP files just turn off the computer.
What a good idea , seekforever I will keep a copy of this in my files for the future thanks

 

I didn't notice that in the past. I'll check it again and report back.

Sure. No problem.

 

Thanks Brian K I am going to try to swap drives when I get a chance, I'll let you know how I make out.

 

dbknox,

Remove the old HD prior to restoring your image to the new HD and let the new HD boot at least once to Windows before reinstalling the old HD as a "slave".

Or were you planning to clone?

 

dbknox,

Using an old HD, I zeroed the first track (first 63 sectors) with MBRWork. If you let WinXP see a HD with a zeroed First Track it asks for Initialization.

I booted to an Acronis TI CD (ver 9) and it saw the HD in the Restore Hard Disk Drive Location window. I exited from TI at this stage and checked the First Track with a Disk Editor. It was still zeroed. I booted to TI again and restored an image to this HD. WinXP booted normally.

Your computer behaved differently in that you couldn't see the HD until it was initialized. Strange. This shouldn't happen as TI should see a blank HD. After all, that's the situation when replacing a dead HD with a new HD. Seekforever has a good workaround. Alternatively you can put a MBR on the blank HD by using fdisk /mbr from a Win98 boot floppy or by using Acronis mbrautowrite_en.iso written to a boot CD.

http://www.acronis.com/files/support/mbrautowrite_en.iso

 

Brian K and others ...thanks very much for your help I am always amazed at the help on this forum evryone seems very concerned about their fellow "posters" and it is much appreciated.

No I was planning on recovering ( to the same sized hard drive) and I had wondered about the above.

That is strange, why my XP didn't ( I have xp home maybe why)

This bothers me I wonder why neither TI nor windows didn't see my new drive.
My new drive is a Seagate Barracudda 7200.9 Pata. Doubt if that is the problem.

That is what troubled me....when my drive crashed how would I ever recover to a new drive if the rescue CD couldn't see it.
I do have a Win 98se boot floppy disk and Thanks for the link I have downloaded the "xfdisk" file and will burn it to a cd.
I think armed with the above and the idea from seekforever I will be okay.
With the prices of Hard drives , I am also thinking af buying another hard drive and initializing it and storing it just in case. ( even just for testing purposes). Thanks again.

 

dbknox,

But Windows did see your HD. It was present in Disk Management. Windows knew it was there. Or are you talking about a drive letter. There is no drive letter until a partition is created. It doesn't need to be a formatted partition. Even an unformatted partition will have a drive letter. You can have a HD which shows in Disk Management as "Unallocated space" (your initial situation) but it will not show in Windows Explorer because there is no drive letter. You can also have partitions without drive letters but that's not relevant here.

In the Acronis Restore Hard Disk Drive Location window, my HD did show as "Unallocated". That's how it should be. In your case there was no indication of a new HD. So you saw your Disk 1 but no Disk 2 (your first and second HD). Is that correct?

If you buy another HD, before letting WinXP see the HD, try it by using the Acronis CD. Install it as Master and another HD as Slave. Naturally you aren't aiming to go beyond the Restore Hard Disk Drive Location window. Does it show as Unallocated?

 

I stand corrected. Thanks for the explaination it will come in handy in the future. I didn't even realize that there was such a thing as "manage" in winXP I got a few hints of it while reading the posts in this forum.

That is correct.

That is the way I tried it, but maybe I had the Master/slave pin wrong, see below. I live a long way from any suppliers so that is in the future.
Yesterday I had quite a long battle with my hard drives, I moved the new "initialized" drive to the main and "recovered" with the rescue disk. This worked very well ( about 7 minutes and I was back up and running). I left the old main drive (old drive 1) unplugged while doing this as per your instructions.
This old drive had just a single partition and was 80 gigs. I should mention that I might be dual booting to a linux os in the future so I am formating FAT32. I installed the old drive and booted windows again and it showed me a 32gig hard drive. I had made an image of the new Intialized drive with 3 partions and I tried restoring to this drive with that 80gig image. All seemed to go well, when I rebooted windows I had 3 partitions adding up to 32 gig. ( instead of 3 partitions adding to 80 gig.) I tried everything I could think of.
I finally uninstalled the drive and removed it. I had the master/slave plug on the third row, I moved it to the second row and rebooted and windows then saw it as an 80 gig drive. I then formated with 3 partitions adding to 80 gig and it works now. I think my biggest problem is I am getting too old and my eyes are going along with my logic/brain. I would bet a lot of money that if or when I do buy another drive that it will work fine using TI rescue disk.
Thanks for the lessons Brian k your help was very much appreciated.

 

dbknox,

I'm glad to have helped. You mentioned dual booting. Have you seen this site?

http://www.goodells.net/multiboot/index.htm

Just for fun, using instructions from Dan Goodell's web site, I recently had 15 installations of WinXP multibooting on a test computer. Each was independent of the other 14.

 

Thanks for the link it looks very helpful, Brian
We live in the country and Easter week-end brings the family and the grandchildren....always glad to see them.

I will have a better look on Monday when the rascals are gone. I seem to remember visiting that site some time ago and lost the link. I have a lot of faith in Dan Goodell.