What will happen to 2nd harddrive if...

[SweetChick]

I'm wanting to replace the factory 40 GB main drive on my Dell 8200 with a Maxtor 7200 RPM 120 GB drive, I currently have a Maxtor 30GB drive as a second harddrive with 3-10GB partitions on it called F,G and H drive that I use for all my storage like pictures, movies and MP3's. If I just replace the main drive and reinstall XP Home from the Dell reinstall disk will it recognize the 2nd harddrive like it is now or should I diconnnect it before I install the new main drive? Thanks

 

[Bob Cerelli]

That should be fine. I have several removable drives that are recognized with no problems and reinstalling the OS.

The only thing you may need to do is go into Disk Management and assign it a drive letter.

 

[SweetChick]

Well I just installed the drive and it is giving problems so I put back the old one so I could get online to figure out the problem, I installed the drive and loaded the Maxblast CD to set up the drive and that worked fine, then when it's restarted I get a error that says "NTLDR IS MISSING" I set the new drive up just like the old one which had the jumpers set for Cable Select. I used the old cable that was in the computer, the harddrive came with a new cable, could that be the problem?

 

[SweetChick]

I just tryed the new cable and it won't work anyway, the second drive connector is too far away from the primary one and won't reach the drive on my DELL. It's cable has the connectors about 2" apart and the new one is about 6".

 

[mcse72]

Have you checked the BIOS with the new drive to see if its being detected? Set the primary master on "auto" with the new drive installed and retry.

 

[Bob Cerelli]

Is the problem now with the new 120 gig drive not booting?

For starters I am assuming that the jumpers are set correctly and the drive is correctly identified by the CMOS as the right size.

How was the original partitioning done on the new drive. Hopefully you didn't use any of the Maxtor software since this has a history of not working with NT based operating systems.

 

[SweetChick]

Well unfortunately I read the Maxtor instructions and used the set-up CD, I should know by now to never follow instructions , anyway to reverse the damage done???