hey guys. i have seemed to run into a problem and some help would be appreciated. the story goes like this.
yesterday i came home with a semi brand new 60gb maxtor hard drive in my hand. i have a 120 gb hard drive already in my dimension 4550, and i thought hey, i got this for free from a friend so why not use it. I take the original drive out so it was less annoying for me to work in that small space, and put both drives back in. i must have gone wrong somewhere because when i booted up, it said that primary drive 0 was not found. after a while, i got the computer to recognize both drives. the 120 gb is a western digital and the 60 gb is a maxtor. even though the computer is recognizing both drives, when i go to boot, after the first part (the DELL sign and the loading bar), it is just a black screen with a blinking _. and after that it will boot to cd because as of now i have the xp professional installation disk in there.
now, when i run the ide drive diagnostics under the boot screen it recognizes both drives but this one word scares me. it looks something like this
wdc (the western digital drive) - thenabunchofnumbers - Fail - return code: 7
then the same thing with the maxtor drive underneath that.
i wouldnt really have much of a problem just re-installing windows onto the original drive since i didnt have anything that was irreplacable on there, but when i go to system recovery and the chkdsk option, it recognizes that there is an installation of windows on the original drive, and that all the information is still there. im just afraid that if i do go ahead and re-install windows, it still will not boot and i would have just lost my stuff (a lose-lose situation eh?).
by the way, it is no problem if i would not be able to use the new drive because it will not be an inconvinience.
so yeah help would be greatly appreciated in this situation. thanks guys
yesterday i came home with a semi brand new 60gb maxtor hard drive in my hand. i have a 120 gb hard drive already in my dimension 4550, and i thought hey, i got this for free from a friend so why not use it. I take the original drive out so it was less annoying for me to work in that small space, and put both drives back in. i must have gone wrong somewhere because when i booted up, it said that primary drive 0 was not found. after a while, i got the computer to recognize both drives. the 120 gb is a western digital and the 60 gb is a maxtor. even though the computer is recognizing both drives, when i go to boot, after the first part (the DELL sign and the loading bar), it is just a black screen with a blinking _. and after that it will boot to cd because as of now i have the xp professional installation disk in there.
now, when i run the ide drive diagnostics under the boot screen it recognizes both drives but this one word scares me. it looks something like this
wdc (the western digital drive) - thenabunchofnumbers - Fail - return code: 7
then the same thing with the maxtor drive underneath that.
i wouldnt really have much of a problem just re-installing windows onto the original drive since i didnt have anything that was irreplacable on there, but when i go to system recovery and the chkdsk option, it recognizes that there is an installation of windows on the original drive, and that all the information is still there. im just afraid that if i do go ahead and re-install windows, it still will not boot and i would have just lost my stuff (a lose-lose situation eh?).
by the way, it is no problem if i would not be able to use the new drive because it will not be an inconvinience.
so yeah help would be greatly appreciated in this situation. thanks guys