PCTech Forums

I have 20 GB HDD having XP on its C:
I recently added 80GB HDD and changed the configuration so that the 20 GB is now slave and new 80 GB as master to be formatted / partitioned etc.

What went wrong I don’t know, but now my system fails to boot 20GB HDD. It says ‘Disk error press any key to restart’.

I could finally boot XP using a third part software like BootIT NG. However when I remove that software PC returns to same Disk error.
All my data on 20GB HDD including boot.ini is intact.
I also tried FIXMBR & FIXBOOT but no luck.

Have you tried removing the secondary drive and just booting with your 20Gig master drive?

Yes I can from 80 GB as master, after loading XP on it.

Actually Ive just realized something. From reading your first post I take it you have made your original MASTER the SLAVE and are trying to boot from it. Correct me people of the forum if I am wrong but I think maybe you can only boot from the MASTER drive. Basically you have to either have the 80gig drive as a SLAVE or put XP on it and make it the MASTER

There are several reasons.

If you forget to discover the new drive in the bios, your install is going right to the old drive. .

If you have a Dell, they use "cable select" and a Cable Select IDE Cable (there is a small square hole punched in the ide cable). If you remember the old IBM computer punch cards, its a hole like that. The middle connector will be the master and the end one will be the slave. If you have only one drive and its hooked up wrong, no problem. Now hook up a second one and go for the format an/or install. You've probably just toasted your data.

It really gets wild if you decide to go from "cable select" to slave\master with your Dell "cable select" ide cable.

If you make a ghost of your drive with a floppy from DOS as a backup and you forget to remove the image drive before you boot the system back up, That drive will never be able to boot as a single, it wil error out. This is what I suspect happened to our original poster

Besides removing all other drives, you want to make sure, that printers, scanners, etc are also removed

Basically when you just address one drive, you eliminate the chance of tinkering with the wrong drive.

Thanks IC. ;)

Thanks a lot! My 20gig c: partition was not active. Have done that. Now it works.
Thanks for your help.