bizarre hard drive behavior

[1stTimeBuilder]

Hello all,

I recently purchased a new hard drive, and have been trying to install it. I want to set it up as a boot device, completely copying everything from my existing hard drive, and use the new drive as my primary drive with the existing drive as a backup drive.

I installed the new hard drive as a slave drive, and copied the existing drive from inside Windows using the utilities that came with the drive. The copying completed without error messages, so I set up the new drive as the Master, disconnected the old drive, and started up the computer. It booted fine, and everything appeared to work, except that all my configuration data for Antivirus (Norton) and Firewall (ZoneAlarm) were gone (it was as if I had just installed that software from scratch). I then reattached the old hard drive as a slave, and tried to start up the computer again. From this point on, if the new hard drive was attached to the system, I could not get the system to boot. Even if only the power cable was attached, the same problem. By not booting, I mean that the system powers up for perhaps 2 seconds, and then powers done. Nothing even shows up on the monitor; it's like it shuts down before it ever hits the system BIOS. This problem occurred regardless of settings (slave, master, no IDE cable attached).

I exchanged the new drive, copied everything over again, and basically the same thing occurred. Only this time, the new drive did not even boot up the one time. When I removed the new drive and switched over to the old drive, it clicked the first time I tried to boot up, but worked the next time and I haven't shut the system down since.

I think my system is to blame for this problem, but have no idea why/how, and wonder if anyone has any ideas which could help.

My system specs (it's about 3 years old).
Power supply: TTGI 320W
CPU: Athlon 1.4 GHz
RAM: 2 256 MB PC2100 sticks (one Crucial and one Samsung I think)
Video: eVGA MX-200 32 MB
CD-ROM: something generic, only a few months old
Motherboard: MSI KT4AV (about 6 months old)
Intel DSL modem
old hard drive: IBM 40 GB
new hard drive: Western Digital 120 GB drive (WD 1200 JBRTL)

P.S. Just before posting this, I had an idea, and put the new drive into an old desktop I had as a slave drive. The system came up fine and I was able to access files on the drive...

 

[kajames]

One of the HD has to be set to SLAVE (via SW switch or jumper from the back of the HD, check doc of new HD). :beer::roll:

 

[1stTimeBuilder]

I did have all the jumpers set correctly in every configuration. I double-checked them each time I made change (from master to slave, etc.), so I think the problem lies elsewhere. I just don't know where....

 

[helpmeout]

Is your new drive a Western Digital? Some WD drives need the jumper removed when they are alone on the cable in the master position.

 

[1stTimeBuilder]

Yes, the drive is a Western Digital. I had the jumper removed when the drive was by itself, and in the appropriate slave/master position when the other drive was attached. I even tried it in the wrong position a couple times just to see if the system would behave differently and it didn't, so I'm quite perplexed.