PCTech Forums

by **lonelypauly** » Sun May 02, 2004 5:05 pm

I recently purchased a Western Digital SATA 250GB hard drive for my new gaming system. When I opened up the box and read the instructions I discovered that this new hard drive will ONLY work with Windows 2000 or XP. The way I have always done it however, is to use my legit copies of Windows 98 or 98se, and then use the Windows 2000 upgrade CD I have, and voila! However, this is not possible with this hard drive! I can't afford to buy Windows 2000 Full Retail ($300!)(100 bucks on Ebay isn't too bad though). I've been trying a drive to drive copy (older IDE to SATA) but my IDE drive doesn't see the SATA drive. The IDE is Windows 2000 NTSF but it just won't see the other drive. This is really making me MEnTaL!!!! Have any of you ever ran into this sort of problem????

by **liljim** » Sun May 02, 2004 6:46 pm

Thats the first i've ever heard of a drive being OS specific...my only thought is the drive may be preformatted to NTFS.Can you run FDISK and display partition information?

by **icecube** » Wed May 05, 2004 3:24 am

I didn't think that you could upgrade 98 with a windows 2000 upgragde disk--I've never tried it. Sooo you should be able to boot with the windows 2000 upgrade disk with only the new drive hooked up and it should boot up and somewhere in the install ask for your winnt cd and I guess in your case put in the win98 disk and you should be up and running

by **lonelypauly** » Wed May 05, 2004 3:10 pm

i've tried everything so far and i still can't get the OS loaded. there is no fdisk for winodows 2000 or XP and yes, this hard drive is OS specific! the hard drive model name shows up when it's hooked up alone, but when i have both hard drives hooked up i get a blue screen stop error. The message on the screen says something about HPT 374. my motherboard came with a floppy that has "HPT 374" on the front! i've tried loading it and nothing happens!!! GRRRR....what do i do? :mad:

by **Jocobo** » Wed May 05, 2004 3:53 pm

What is the exact error you receive?

by **lonelypauly** » Thu May 13, 2004 3:08 pm

Here are some of the error messages I've been seeing: "Disk I/O error: 0000BB01" (this message appears after POST and just before the OS setup screen appears. "Kmode exception not handled, Address 8045E780 base at 80400000, date stamp 384d5a76-ntoskrnl.exe" (this message appears in the Stop Error Blue Screen.

by **Cactus** » Thu May 13, 2004 4:38 pm

Do you have the Win2000 Service Pack installed?
I think Service Pack 1 dealt with issues similiar to yours.

by **lonelypauly** » Thu May 13, 2004 5:44 pm

by **liljim** » Thu May 13, 2004 9:48 pm

you can run fdisk from the 98 cd to find out how the drive is partitioned and what format was used.I dont think you can create a setup disk from a service pack.Did the drive come with any western digital instalation software?
Do you have the latest bios updates avaliable for your motherboard?

HPT 374 is a raid controller
includes bios update and windows drivers

by **lonelypauly** » Fri May 14, 2004 5:09 am

Ok,

So after fiddling with it for hours I've determined that there is some bad or missing MB/Partition information on the HD. Can anyone recommend any tools to fix it? This HD is new and has never had an OS on it.

by **Restek** » Fri May 14, 2004 2:50 pm

I'm a little confused - you are saying that you are running windows 98 and when you plug in tour new drive, you get blue screens when it is loading. Is this correct?

How did you determine that there is missing partition info? If it's new, there won't be any info - that's why you have to partition it.

The only reason I could see that you'd need XP rather than 98 is that 98 may not support serial ATA drives.

by **Cactus** » Fri May 14, 2004 4:11 pm

by **lonelypauly** » Fri May 14, 2004 8:36 pm

PCTech Forums

Huge 250GB hard drive nightmare

Huge 250GB hard drive nightmare

Who is online