need help installing new HD

SAD_DC

SAD_DC

New Member
Ok well its time for round 2.
I just got my new HD (again) and this time I need to make it work so I dont have to rma it again.

Its a 500G WD and its going in as a secondary storage not raid.
If anyone would not mind I would love a step by step because last time
I tried to install it and get it to work it did not want to start again...

so please if someone would be kind enough to help me out I will appreciate it very much...

Thanks.
 
SAD_DC said:
Its a 500G WD and its going in as a secondary storage not raid.
If anyone would not mind I would love a step by step because last time
I tried to install it and get it to work it did not want to start again...
Click to expand...

I'm assuming here that the drive is a while WD also has a 500gb ide model available as well. It sounds like the new drive again was set as the default boot device resulting in a blinking cursor being seen in the upper corner of the screen? Even with an ide model that would be seen.

For an ide the drive's jumper being set wrong for the position on the cable would also stall a system. In some cases you have to set the second drive to cable select instead of slave on the middle connector. But having an unpartitioned and unformatted drive set as the default will stop you cold.
 
Are you seeing a blank screen with a blinking dash in the upper left hand corner? That would point to the new drive being first in the order. Go into the bios and follow the instructions seen in the board's manual for arranging the list of hard drives installed to insure the host drive with Windows is at the top of the list.

Once you have Windows loading again you can easily use the Disk Management tool for partitioning and formatting the new drive to make it ready for use there. You find that in the Control Panel>Administrative Tools>Computer Management>Storage section. When opening the DM tool up you will see a small windows with all drives shown there.

You then simply right click on the one that shows the 465gb approximate of unallocated drive space to first choose partition creation and later right click again on the new logical drive to choose the format option in the right click menu. This will make the drive accessible. You can even change the designated drive letter bu choosing that option after it sees a logical drive letter designated to it.
 
It should be as simple as mounting the drive in your case and connecting the cables. You shouldn't need to adjust the boot order in the BIOS but if it gives you an error message about no OS found or something similar go into the BIOS and adjust the boot order so that the other hard drive appears first.
 
If I set the second sata here used for storage as first in the drive order at the top of the list all you end up with a blinking dash seen in the upper left hand corner of a blank screen. Usually the missing operating system error points at the mbr damaged or a boot file missing. The quesion here now for SAD DC is what was seen onscreen?
 
You'll see ntldr is corrupted or missing or something very close to that if the drive was partitioned/formatted with windows but doesn't have windows installed on it. If it's raw, I believe the BIOS will say something along the lines of no OS is found.
 
Thanks guys...

Ok to pc eyes question
when I did it last the computer would not start..
as in

When ever I had the new formated hdd plugged in my computer would freeze at the "AMD" screen. I tried going on bios or safe mode and it did nothing..

and I basically did exactly what I was told to do by you pc eye.
I dont know what It could have been maybe a faulty maxtor drive?
 
The only time you see the ntldr missing is when the Windows installer has made an entry into a drive's mbr where that then looks for the boot loader. That's also where you will see the missing OS type message. For a drive simply partitioned and formatted you get a blank screen and a flashing dash when trying to boot with it when no OS or even boot information has even been on it.

You may have another problem besides the Maxtor or WD drive there. Once you add a second drive more power is pulled through the board as expected pointing to a weak cap or bios problem being realized. That owuld explain the freeze up at post time.
 
The first thing to do is get familiar with the bios and the various settings there by reviewing the manual for that make and model board. That provides the information on installing hard drives as well as memory, cpu, video and sound cards, and whatever else.

On many boards once you go to the boot section and highlight hard drives you press the enter ky to see a menu screen where the list of hard drives are shown with one above the other. You use the * and - keys found on the NumPad to move one drive to the top of the list also above card reader if that is listed as well. That sets that one specific drive as the default.

Once you hit the ESC key that brings you back to the first boot order screen to choose the type of device(HD, cd rom, floppy) that will be the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th if more then one is enabled. One thing however since this is being seen with the second drive installed is to make sure the power and data cables are both plugged into the new drive.

You can also unplug the maxtor host and boot from the Vista disk to see if the new WD model is seen by the installer then. You can even throw a quick install onto it and later wipe that by a reformat to see if the drive itself is good. If you did get a bad drive you will know then real fast.
 
PC eye said:
The first thing to do is get familiar with the bios and the various settings there by reviewing the manual for that make and model board. That provides the information on installing hard drives as well as memory, cpu, video and sound cards, and whatever else.

On many boards once you go to the boot section and highlight hard drives you press the enter ky to see a menu screen where the list of hard drives are shown with one above the other. You use the * and - keys found on the NumPad to move one drive to the top of the list also above card reader if that is listed as well. That sets that one specific drive as the default.

Once you hit the ESC key that brings you back to the first boot order screen to choose the type of device(HD, cd rom, floppy) that will be the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th if more then one is enabled. One thing however since this is being seen with the second drive installed is to make sure the power and data cables are both plugged into the new drive.

You can also unplug the maxtor host and boot from the Vista disk to see if the new WD model is seen by the installer then. You can even throw a quick install onto it and later wipe that by a reformat to see if the drive itself is good. If you did get a bad drive you will know then real fast.
Click to expand...



so basically what your trying to tell me here is go into boot order screen and set HD as first??

now im wondering am I suppose to set more than one hd? or just one?

cuz I see HD, Floppy and cd...

that right?
 
The first thing to do there is look in the list of drives to see which one is at the top of the list. That will be the one that sees the bios look for a boot loader on. What Cromewell was pointing at earlier was when trying to install Vista the files couldn't go onto a non partitioned drive and more or less scrubbed the XP boot information.

The Maxtor should be the one still seen as the default drive with the first boot device being set to cd rom unless you have the option to choose the one time boot from your optical drive like pressing a F key at post time to select the type as well as one from the list of that type installed.

Once the setup files are copied fully and the system is retsrted by the installer the OS drive is already set as default and will see the installation complete itself. The first hard drive on the system will see the noot information placed there if plugged in while installing Windows even if you choose a second drive for Windows itself. When booting to Windows installed on a second drive/partition, or even third drive like a sata where you may have two ide drives as well it will still see itself as the C drive.

If your board lacks the F8, F11, F12 type boot device menu for selecting a one time boot then you would set the cd rom for both cd snd dvd rype drives as the first with hard drives as the second. When starting the system from there you will see the press any key now to boot from cd rom etc. where you simply press any key to boot from the installation disk. The floppy search setting in the bios is generally disabled these days unless you have a floppy installed or boot with a Grub or Lilo boot floppy for Linux. Some drive tools like fdisk for the older versions of Windows would also see 3 1/2" used.
 
wow... im dumb.. so newegg sent me the wrong kind, its a ide but I installed it and went to bios and heres what I see..

My boot order is
1HD
2CD
3FLOPPY

and in
"cmos setup utility: HD Boot Priority"
I see the following...

1.Ch 6 M: Maxtor (my 300G drive)
2.Ch 2 M: WDC (the new 500G drive)
3.Bootable Add in Cards

and in the
"standard CMOS Features"

I see this..

IDE Channel 1 Master Asus (my cd drive)
IDE Channel 2 Master WD (the new hdd)
IDE Channel 6 Master Maxtor (my old 300G)


now my question is...
if im not running a raid should the new drive be slave??
because I have the computer on and its fine I havent formated yet or nothing but im wondering if i should change it to slave or what.
the new drive is an IDE and luckally I found a spare ide cable in my mobo box and I plugged it in right next to where my disk drive is plugged in (IDE2) or something of the sort.
none of the drives (cd, hdd, hdd) are on a master/slave cable they all have their own...

now I started my computer checked cmos/bios and when windows started it told me that there was new hardware found and it said "ready to use"

well let me know guys because if everything is fine and I dont need to set it as slave im going to go ahead and format/partition it and hopefully it keeps working :D

THANKS
 
Well this is the one thing you should have known the instant the drive arrived by one quick look at the drve to see what type of cables plugged into it. You were talking like you already had the drive installed.

Whether you slave it to the current optical drive or master it as most do just remember that the Windows installer will see that first when looking for where to place the boot files and information. This effects Vista as well as XP. Vista will see a new boot folder on that drive if left plugged in and you have to reinstall Windows for some reason.

The boot prior is correct for having Windows on the Maxtor. Here with Vista on a 250gb ide drive and XP on the first of two 500gb sata models it would look like this.

WD 500gb(full model number)
WD 500gb(same model number)
card reader
WD 250gb ide(full number seen)

I simply set the boot as the first being set to hard drive and disable the remaining to force boot the model drive set to default. When going to reinstall XP when the first board quit on the new build here I daaaa.... somehow forgpt to unplug the 250gb Vista drive and XP then saw itself as the D not C drive. oops! Vista needed a startup repair as well since the ntldr and boot.ini files were placed thare instead of on the first sata.

Eaxh is setup as a stand alone drive meaning no dual boot configuration and loss of the Vista system restore feature. To reinstall Vista I simply unplug the two satas. There you would simply use the Disk Management tool for partitioning and formatting especially formatting if you have ever used the free Linux tool GParted live for cd. That shows even 1mb of unallocated drive space with the platform independent version.

In the DM simply right clcik there to make things easy to create the one or more partitions you are planning and then again later to see the one or more formatted as new logical drives. You may see a drive letter shift of the optical from D to E where you simlpy rght click again to use the change drive letter option. Set the new drive up higher in the alphabet to like G or H in order to rechange the optical drive back to D since the drive letter will then be free.
 
yea I wasent paying much attention to what kind of cables plug into it theres been alot going on.

but I checked and the new drive is set to cable select..

and so what your telling me is that If i partition/format this drive which is what I was about to do; then I will loose all of my programs and such on my windows vista? and have to reinstall it?
and if so when does this happen? after the format/partition? or anytime randomly? because if it is bound to happen then I will take it out n ship it back asap.
 
oh and also am I going to have to install windows on the new drive to? because I thought that al I have to do is format/partiotion it and I can start using it as a secondary storage.
 
Once you have the WD model in unless you rma it for the sata version instead you simply go into the Control Panel>Administrative Tools>Computer Management>Storage section and open up the Disk Management tool. That will show all drives installed where you simply right click on the WD model to create the new fresh partition and later format it.

When first booting Vista again the new hardware found notification is to be expected. Partitioning and formatting with the DM is done while Windows is running. That's the Windows drive tool itself there.

What I was pointing out was that if your system is hit with a virus or you change back to XP where you have to install Windows just remember that the ide overrides the sata and the Windows installer looks for the "first" drive whether ide or sata installed to place the boot information and files needed there even while you have anohter drive selected to see Windows go on.

With Windows going on the first of two satas nothing changes on the second one. In fact Windows will now have to install the new WD drive once you have that all plugged in. If you see a prompt simply allow Windows to perform an automatic search where it will go through it's own driver based stored on the drive to assign the new drive letter.
 
oh so what your getting at is that if I need to reformat the computer completely I will see the IDE as first so that would be my main drive from there...

ok well I dont think I will be doing that anytime soon so im good :D thanks for the heads up thou.

and yea I will let you know how it works

Thanks.
 
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