hard drive swap gone bad

[ndbdesign]

This is the adventure,customer calls says "i need to swap out a hard drive for a bigger one",i say no prob..Get there nice it's a Maxtor drive so i'm thinking no big deal a couple of hrs. Boy was i wrong!!!

Nothing but probs. from the start first the MaxBlast won't run right.Then i get it going set up the drives and all that working beautiful. So at this point my happy,until "Error Drive 81 I/O timeout: darn i say!!

Call tech to find out the error code meaning(Slave drive timeout problem or something) Tells me to set both drives as Master on pri. and sec. channels and use the new ribbon.But now the comp. won't even boot?

Nice now i'm not very happy. Disconnect the new drive to re-boot,boots to Windows and then crashes(can't read to c: drive) error. So now i'm stumped,i'm thinking maybe mobo or something is gone bad in doing all this swapping

The comp is:
HP Pavilion 8380
P2 400 MHZ
196 MB ram ATI Rage 3D onboard

Any ideas i now have the pc and i'm gonna start testing,but big storm so i figured i would post a note

Sorry this is so long but so has my day!!!

Thanks and L8R

 

[nightowl17]

Those HP Pavilions are tricky little dudes. I have one as my backup pc and have found it does not like a lot of outside software , I believe if you use Fdisk to format the hard drive instead of Maxblaste you will have better luck , another tool I have used with good success is a tool called the "Ultimate Boot Disk .

http://www.startdisk.com/

Go to the link and download the approtate disk for you OS .Next you cannot have two Master disk on one PC .what I would do is set the new one as master and the one with the os as slave ,Formate the new one then switch it to slave and clone it with MaxBlaster ,after the clone switch it back to master . This should work I have done this on mine . You may have to go into the BIOS and reset the defaults first inorder to boot up.
Hope This Helps

 

[ndbdesign]

Thanks Nightowl for the info. But i got it on my own. After about 6 hrs. of messing with stuff BIOS,Pri IDE,Sec IDE ,etc..

Those HP's definately are a tricky comp..Plus it my first experience with one as well as with WinME.So it was a good learning experience.

And i don't think i lost to much hair over the whole ordeal.

LOL hahaha!!

Anyways thanks for the link and have a great day.

L8R,
ndb@pcprecision