[mmoleiro]

Hi,
I have a store bought (2.5 yrs old) HP Pavillion a1520n. 2GB RAM (upgraded), 250GB hard drive, Windows XP Media center edition, AMD 64x2 Dual Core Processor 3800+. Just yesterday I installed an additional hard drive: Seagate barracuda ST3250410AS. Plugged into SATA - 2nd opening on the motherboard (out of 4 total openings - first opening had original HD plugged in which I did not change and I plugged the new HD into the next sequential spot), went into Computer Management and formatted the drive so that it shows up in "My Computer", set the Boot order in BIOS to boot the new drive first before the old drive so that I could install windows from the "System Restore" discs that HP tells you to make (because the recovery console is built into a partition on the orig. hard drive), put the recovery discs in the CD-ROM and restarted the computer - asked me if I wanted to complete system recovery, at which point I THOUGHT I was installing all the new OS files onto the NEW drive but only ended up re-formatting my entire "old" hard drive upon which my entire life was stored but I digress.... Now, I have a newly formatted "old" hard drive and the new drive is installed and being read, but I cannot boot from it. I should say - my goal was to make the new drive into the primary and use the old drive as a slave/backup (it was getting slow and glitching out on me). I don't know if I need to change the SATA plugs, or unplug the original drive so that I can install XP onto the new drive? Or if I should scrap the whole thing and just use the new disc as the backup? As I said before, I don't have a stand alone XP disc, just the "system restore" discs that I made from the HP program (yes I know, this sucks and I will never buy one again lol). If anyone can shed any light on this I would greatly appreciate it as I've spent enough time trying to figure it out myself and erasing all my files in the mean time.
One more thing - new drive did not come with any jumper.

[dustyjay]

Since you are talking about seagate drives here you can download MaxBlast5 from Seagate and clone the original drive to the new drive. Connect the new drive to the sata connector that the original drive was connected to. It should boot no problem to the new drive. If there is not an os on the new drive it can't be booted from. For future reference if restoring to a factory setup from a restore set, remove all but the drive you are restoring to. (it can be left in place just disconnect it.)

[markomus]

If you deleted your recovery partition you're done. You'll need to go here and order recovery discs (not, I think, like the ones you already made, but a different system than the partition system).

If your old drive is glitching out on you, do you think it wise to keep it even as a back up? Just sayin...

I would simply keep the new drive on, order the discs, and install.

Sorry 'bout your lost data. Never a good thing, but if you Google around you might find some data recovery experts that can help you, but only do it if it's really worth the $ and hassle.

Wish you the best!

[mmoleiro]

dustyjay - Thanks so much for the info! I will try the MaxBlast5 (even though now the only files are the OS and a few updates i downloaded since restarting, but I do still need to be able to boot the new disc). Wish I knew about this yesterday, lol, they say hindsight's 20/20. PS - Popeye's awesome!

markomus - The recovery partition on the orig. HD is fine, and the discs I have already - that's what I was using to try and format the new drive, only I ended up wiping out my old drive. I did back up some stuff a few weeks ago so I'm not that upset - but it will still probably take me a week or so to get all my programs re-installed. More of a hassle than anything.

[markomus]

Ok...so you didn't really format your entire old drive, just the entire OS partition on the old drive. Wish you the best with MaxBlast5