Replace 2nd HDD on Dell Dimension E520 PC

RoyalSwank

Hi all,

I've got a Dell Dimension E520 PC. Currently it's got two 160GB HDD's in it (C Drive for System, D drive for data storage).

I've just bought a Samsung F3 1.5TB SATA drive to replace the second (data storage) drive on my pc.

My problem is that when I replace the drive, the operating system won't boot. The new drive is seen in the bios (F2 set-up).

In fact, the OS won't boot unless both original drives are connected (not just the primary HDD)

Does anyone have any ideas as to what the problem is? I assumed I'd just have to unplug the old drive and plug in the new one.

Cheers, RS

fwor

Have you checked which drive & partition was (in the original config) defined in the BIOS as the one to boot from?

I've seen a situation before where the system boots from the MBR of a drive other than the one that the OS is installed on.

You should be able to check this in the BIOS setup.

If for example the HDD with the D drive partition on it was being booted from and the new drive has no bootable partition then (obviously) the system won't boot.

Richie-from-the-Boro

One of your drives will have a hidden partition with your O/S on it.

- are you sure what you think is the physical drive is in fact ?
- the puter was only sold with one HDD can I assume you have installed an extra drive at some point ?
- you say you can see the newSamsung F3 SATA, is it showing as 0 or 1 ?
- can you see your old drive and is it showing as 0 or 1 ?

Because of the hidden partition the safest rule with Dell OEM is to have the driver installation CD in the drawer before you boot and follow the instructions.

RoyalSwank

In Disk Management I see
Disc 0: (D:) Healthy (System, Active Primary Partition)
Disc 1: (C:) Healthy (Boot, Page File, Crash Dump, Primary Partition)

I'm not sure physically which disk is which (which doesn't help!) thus I tried various configurations - none of which worked.
I was able to get to the point where the new drive was Drive 0 in the bios and the other drive was Drive 1 (as per what I see in disk management)
I bought the PC from a friend and it came with the 2 HDDs in it.

What do you think I should do?
I have the Dell Driver CD
I can't tell from the BIOS which HDD is booting

Richie-from-the-Boro

RoyalSwank wrote: »

In Disk Management I see
Disc 0: (D:) Healthy (System, Active Primary Partition)
Disc 1: (C:) Healthy (Boot, Page File, Crash Dump, Primary Partition)

I'm not sure physically which disk is which (which doesn't help!) thus I tried various configurations - none of which worked.
I was able to get to the point where the new drive was Drive 0 in the bios and the other drive was Drive 1 (as per what I see in disk management)
I bought the PC from a friend and it came with the 2 HDDs in it.

What do you think I should do?
I have the Dell Driver CD
I can't tell from the BIOS which HDD is booting

Aye, they are a bit of a pig because what you see is not always what you get. Your objective is to have the new drive as Disk1:

Can you tell from the BIOS screen which drive is where ?, the F3 should be the 1 and your old drive [ ? name ] should be 0 which is the active drive.

Be careful what you are doing - you may have got it wrong and your bootable system drive is the one you are trying to replace.

fwor

Looks like you're booting from the MBR on Disk 1 but your system files are on Disk 0. It's fairly easy to do by accident when upgrading an older version of Windows at the same time as adding a HDD, so the previous owner has probably done that.

I think it will be hard to fix. The only way I can think of would be to use something like Clonezilla or Ghost to clone the partition and MBR of Disk 1 onto your new HDD, and then create a new data partition in the remaining free space.

At this stage it may be worth downloading Testdisk and booting from that as a LiveCD (or any Linux LiveCD that has GPARTED as standard) - it should give you a more impartial view of what's on your disks with nothing hidden.

RoyalSwank

OK, quite confused now. I don't understand why I want the new drive to be Drive 1?

According to the disk management the C: Drive is currently Drive 1
The C: drive contains all the widows and programme files and I assume is the boot drive.
I want to replace the other drive (D: drive which contains all my data which I've backed up on to an external).

It's difficult for me to tell in the bios because the only way I can get back online is to put both original disks back in the PC. They are both the same make and size (160GB)

RoyalSwank

fwor wrote: »

Looks like you're booting from the MBR on Disk 1 but your system files are on Disk 0. It's fairly easy to do by accident when upgrading an older version of Windows at the same time as adding a HDD, so the previous owner has probably done that.

I think it will be hard to fix. The only way I can think of would be to use something like Clonezilla or Ghost to clone the partition and MBR of Disk 1 onto your new HDD, and then create a new data partition in the remaining free space.

At this stage it may be worth downloading Testdisk and booting from that as a LiveCD (or any Linux LiveCD that has GPARTED as standard) - it should give you a more impartial view of what's on your disks with nothing hidden.

That sounds like a right PITA!
Maybe I'd be better off doing a clean install?
Maybe now is the time to upgrade to Windows 7!

fwor

RoyalSwank wrote: »

Maybe I'd be better off doing a clean install?
Maybe now is the time to upgrade to Windows 7!

Yes - if you've got original WinXP media that's what I would do.

Unless you're sure that all of the hardware will work without issues with Win7 I would not take that route, though no reason not to try it I guess.

I could also suggest that you try one of the Linux distros such as Ubuntu on it, but Richie would immediately accuse me of being a Linux phanboy, so I won't (just kidding Richie!).

closed

According to that, d: is the active partition.

XP? What does boot.ini say, and where are ntldr and ntdetect?

Partition the new disk, and clean install, use the old ones for external/internal backup with disk imaging software.

Richie-from-the-Boro

RoyalSwank wrote: »

That sounds like a right PITA!
Maybe I'd be better off doing a clean install?
Maybe now is the time to upgrade to Windows 7!

No need to go that far. I'm hesitating because the puter comes on Vista with one HDD [ Drive C: ] with a hidden partition [ usually about 10GB in size ] which it calls Volume D : / or / Drive So what you call drive is really your recovery partition.

I do not want you to harm / delete your recovery partition.

The slowest and safest route because Vista runs a~n~other complication called ' shadow copy ' is to put your old drive back in and go to computer management / drive management and work out which drive is which ! If you are correct in what you say you will see three not two drives in disk management. That's why I said in an earlier post "" what you see is not always what you get ""

DELL [ protection ] should have not assigned as a hidden part of C: in the first place!

I'm going for some falling down water, if your here in the morrow I'll find you.

for : fwor : "" Richie would immediately accuse me of being a Linux phanboy "" never fwor your a gud~'n :beer: