do i have to format new hard drive?

undefinedundefinedI took out my old hard drive plugged in a new one, my computer auto detected the hd, the error message is disk boot drive error , i have gone to bios and changed the boot order, tried every order with no luck.
Luck being the key word. I am self taught, as you may have noticed from the "plugged in a new one" ( the old hard drive worked but i wanted to start new)

do i have to FORMAT my new hard drive??
any help out there, this website has helped me so much i have to thank everyone and HAPPY NEW YEAR

 

A new Hdd should come with software for formating the Hdd Some come with a cd and a floppy and some with just the cd but you can.t just "plugin" a new Hdd and just boot up.If your new drive didn't come with software contact the store where you got it and let them know you want the software that should have been with the drive

 

If you are using this as a primary drive you can partition it and format with the Windows CD. If this is going to be a slave drive (secondary drive for storage) then you can go into the control panel > administrative tools > computer managment > storage > disk managment and create a partition and format from there. You will need to partition the disk before formatting, however.

 

That is why the factory software works much better, it is job specific that is all it does is format the new drive so all you have to do is install your OS, cuts out a few steps and makes it much easier with less chance for mistakes.

 

the new hdd did not come with software from dell. it will be the primary and i finally got it to the point to boot & start installing xp, then an error and blue screen "unknown hard error. i rebooted now it seems to be stuck on "verifiying DMI pool data

any suggestions?

 

If it's a Western Digital Drive which I believe is Dells HHD supplier, you can DL Data LifeGuard Tools from Here --> http://support.wdc.com/download/downloadxml.asp#1

HTH,

Steve

 

its a maxtor just about to go to there site when i decided to hook up my old drive a slave it booted right away and in the process of loading xp, hope all goes well or i will be back . thanks for your help.

 

error while loading xp
stop c0000221 unknown hard error/systemroot/system32/ntdll.dll

 

www.maxtor.com downloaded maxblast, have to sleep and start tomorrow with fresh brain.

 

thought i had it made , xp loaded now the WELCOME, appears and no way to add users or access the files or any information a blank light blue screen is all i see. What do you say??

 

I had that happen on the last PC I built with the blue screen at the exact same place. All I did was reboot and it worked fine after that.

 

I say format and try again, check your install disk is clean and all you hardware is plugged in. Don’t plug in your OLD Hard Drive.

Here is a link with step by step instructions and screen shots: http://www.winsupersite.com/showcase/windowsxp_sg_clean.asp

Hope this helps…

Let us know how you go.

Cheers

 

Just want to add that you might not have helped yourself when you changed the boot order. Specifically, the hard drive should be after the floppy drive, and in the case of XP, always behind the CD drive. When you think about it the reason is pretty obvious. When there in a problem with the hard drive, or when installing a new one, you need the computer to boot to a CD so that software can load to do what needs to be done with the hard drive.

If you changed the boot order, just be sure you ended up with the order you wanted.


- HandsOff