Wolfspirit

Recently, my SATA HDD, had an unmountable boot volume blue screen problem and I had to get Dell to replace the Hard Disk.

They brought over a brand new one, installed it, and left the old Hard Disk behind for me to backup my data.

So I plugged in both HDDs (Same Brand, Same Specs), but it couldn't boot to Windows as both Hard Disks contained Windows XP OSes. The usual solution would be to set the old hard disk to Slave, but the model of the HDD I am using does not have any jumper. The only way to boot to Windows now is to disable the old hard disk via the BIOS. But when I enter Windows, I (obviously) won't be able to see data on my old HDD.

Is there anyway to perhaps remove windows from the Old Hard Disk so it won't conflict, or perhaps set it to slave? Would a multi-boot program be able to bypass this problem?

Please answer quickly! I have to return the hard disk in 7 days (Or buy it... Is it worth it?)

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joeblow1e

If you don't need the files on the old hard disk, i would just reformat the drive...have both drives enabled and boot the windows xp disc at startup. Go through the steps to reformat the drive (format as NTFS) and don't install XP back on the drive. when you restart (take out the disc) you should be able to login to XP and then use the old drive for backups
The other option would be modifying the boot.ini file...you could get help here: support.microsoft.com/kb/q289022/

However, I have fixed a boot.ini with dual booting before using the Windows XP install disk. You would use the recovery console built into the XP disk.
1.Boot with XP CD or 6 floppy boot disk set.

2. Press R to load the Recovery Console.

3. Type bootcfg /rebuild

4. This should fix any boot.ini errors causing setup not to see the XP OS installs on the two hard drives.

Hope this helps!