OLd School...Dell 4300 wont pick up new hard drive

[Jeffwo]

My hard drive is good (everything working fine) but I bought a larger hard drive (from a member here and have no reason to believe it's not good) so I took old drive out, put new drive in (selected Cable Select on jumper) but keep getting a "Disk Read Error" message.

 

[BoomerD]

Dell seems to like "Cable Select" settings for PATA. If it's the only drive on that cable, try setting it for "Master" and connecting it to the "Master" connector on the cable. (or "Slave" as the case may be)

 

[Jeffwo]

Dell seems to like "Cable Select" settings for PATA. If it's the only drive on that cable, try setting it for "Master" and connecting it to the "Master" connector on the cable. (or "Slave" as the case may be)

LOL...tried that already but thanks anyway.

I never had experience with the Dell desktops as I always built my own towers. I bought this one cheap(from a member here) and it has run flawlessly for 3 yrs. now. I just decided to update the hard drive.

I just figured it had a combination or secret code that I I wasn't aware of. Maybe someone will see this who has had this same problem and fixed it.

BTW....this is a Dell Diminsion 4300
Set BIOS to HDD as 1st boot device /AUTO

 

[goobernoodles]

I'm not entirely clear what you've done.

You swapped out your boot drive with a newer HDD, correct?

Did you use a disk imaging solution to clone the drive to the new HDD? Are you trying to install an OS from scratch?

There's some major info missing here.

 

[Jeffwo]

I'm not entirely clear what you've done.

You swapped out your boot drive with a newer HDD, correct?

Did you use a disk imaging solution to clone the drive to the new HDD? Are you trying to install an OS from scratch?

There's some major info missing here.

Yes, I took out the old HDD and put in one with no OS. I did intend to install an OS from scratch.

Is that the reason it's giving the disk read error?

You'd think as long as I've been around here, I'd know these things...LOL

 

[jamesmcuk]

Yes, I took out the old HDD and put in one with no OS. I did intend to install an OS from scratch.

Is that the reason it's giving the disk read error?

You'd think as long as I've been around here, I'd know these things...LOL

It could be a few reasons but first thing to do is whack in your OS CD and boot off that and see if you can find and wipe/ reformat the thing using that. If its not found or is not co-operating change the ide cable and make sure the bios is detecting it. What size is your new drive? You may have the old 130+ something GigaByte BIOS inflicted partition limit which may also be causing the problem if its partitioned bigger than that.

 

[goobernoodles]

Was the HDD you put in previously used? If it finds a corrupt OS or MBR you can get the disk read error, I believe.

Like the previous poster said, boot to your OS CD. If the OS wizard picks up the drive, just reformat it and install your OS. Assuming you have no problems, and you want to have additional peace of mind, you may want to run scandisk and search for bad sectors.

 

[Jeffwo]

OK, I finally set up my new drive as slave to old drive, went into OS setup but new drive wouldn't format.

Guess drive is bad.

 

[jamesmcuk]

what size is the new drive?

 

[betasub]

Seems like you are doing things in a strange order.

If you are able to boot to Windows from your old drive with the new drive attached, look under:
Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Computer Management > Storage > Disk Management

If the hardware is connected properly, from here you should be able to identify, activate and format partitions on the new drive.

 

[Jeffwo]

Seems like you are doing things in a strange order.

If you are able to boot to Windows from your old drive with the new drive attached, look under:
Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Computer Management > Storage > Disk Management

If the hardware is connected properly, from here you should be able to identify, activate and format partitions on the new drive.

I'll try that when I get home ... Thx

 

[jensbodal]

If HD is unformatted and is only drive attached and is attached to correct IDE port and is set to Master, you should be able to verify drive is attached and recognized in the BIOS. Do you see it there?

Assuming drive is there, you need to set boot order to include CD-ROM and have that be the first drive, then boot from OS CD and format the drive while installing the OS.

 

[Lanyap]

That's a very old system, circa 2001. Your new HD is probably too big for the motherboard/BIOS to handle. You might have to stick with 120GB or less. You could try a BIOS update to the last available, A06, if you are not already at that level.
http://support.dell.com/support/dow...=-1&dateid=-1&typeid=-1&formatid=-1&source=-1

 

[Jeffwo]

Well, it still won't format the 200Gig drive. I'll have to try something different.

 

[jensbodal]

So it is showing up in the BIOS?