hard drive issue

[plastick]

(I posted this in general hardware also.)

I have 2 hard drives, one 80 gig and one 60 gig. The 60 gig is my c: drive wich just died on me. Well, it still boots up and copies the system files and stuff so xp will boot, but after that it wont be accessed. It just makes a noise like its trying to read but cant. Anyway, what I want to do is change my 80 gig to the c: drive and toss my 60 gig. But I can't change the drive letter from e: to c: on my 80 gig.

Im not sure what the best way to go about fixing my problem is.

If I reinstall xp on my 80 gig without my 60 gig in the pc, will it aoutomatically change drive letters?

Any help is appreciated.

 

[Ynog]

I am alittle confused on what you are looking to do.

But let me try to clarify what you are asking?

You have XP on a 60 GB drive which is basically dead.
The 80GB doesn't have XP right? So you need to install XP on it.

I would remove the 60GB drive and install XP on the 80GB drive.
If you only have the 80GB drive installed, it should set the drive letter to C.

As a note its easy to change drive letters of paritions that don't contain the Registry.
However you use the Registry and basically hack the change on the one that has the
registry. I would avoid this. Doing this can cause alot more problems than its worth.

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;Q223188#2

 

[Ynog]

As a note, I am not sure since its been awhile since I installed 2000 on a drive so I will ask others a question
you might want to keep in mind if there is data you want on the 80GB drive.

Will installing XP on the 80GB drive blow away all the data already on it?

 

[jst0ney]

Probably not but 2000 will use what it needs without asking so I recommend backing up what you need off of the 80GB.

oops I wrote about 2000. Xp is more friendly but I would say your better off backing up what you need and starting over on fresh partitions.

 

[plastick]

sorry, I will better explain.

I have a 60 gig, it is labeled c:
I have an 80 gig with 3 partitions, e:, f:, and g:

the 60 gig died but still loads the boot sector files since its c:... but after that it dies..
oh wait.. i installed 2k server on the 60 gig and xp on the 80 (partition e: )
so now when the 60 gig is disconnected, the boot sector is nowhere to be found and it thinks there is no os installed.

so i guess thats the prob.

what should i do?

 

[Ynog]

well if when you uninstalled the 60 GB drive you get no os installed. you will probably need to clear the MBR.

You can do this by using the recovery console.
I believe you want the command fixmbr. It should remove the need for the second hard drive to boot.

 

[Nothinman]

well if when you uninstalled the 60 GB drive you get no os installed. you will probably need to clear the MBR.

No, he needs a new MBR. The MBR is on the hard disk and since the 60G was the master the MBR on the 80G is blank. Or at the very least no partition is set active.

Boot to the recovery console and run fixmbr, that might enough to get you going. If not you'll need to use a partition tool to set the correct partition active then try again. If that doesn't work I would probably give up and just do a repair install, that will probably fix up any remaining issues.

 

[plastick]

ok good..perfect..thanks.. i will first try the recovery console and fixmbr.

if that no work, then i will try to either repair or just reinstall xp (for the 12 time).

thanx for your help