Hard drive advice !!

Thanks for your reply Minibiker, Maybe I should explain how i got into this mess , i bought a new pc so when it arrived i wanted to clone my old hard drive and put it on the new pc, after cloning using an external hard drive then came the time to upload it using software , when completed i checked everything was ok but this is where I think I made a major error,, i forgot to make the new drive the one to boot up pc, so when i had finished i closed the program and a message came up saying pc was closing down and restarting , when it restarted all i got was message saying (could not find a bootable drive.
 
Couple things,if you have cloned your old hard drive to the new one, which drives do you have plugged in at the moment?
Unplug any other drives other than the new one.

You may also need to set your new drive to be the main boot drive, this should help, https://www.lifewire.com/change-the-boot-order-in-bios-2624528

A side note, cloning drives often leads to weird issues, it is always best to just setup the new PC from fresh. A bit of a pain and long process to reinstall apps or games etc but then you don't run into any problems. If you need to copy any personal data from your old hard drive by all means plug that in, copy stuff over to the new drive then format the old one or keep it as a backup and unplug it completely.
 
Thanks for your input , i used USB external hard drive which I unplugged after uploading , i just looked at the link you sent me, when I start the pc it automatically runs the command screen and does a check and at the end says no boot drive found so when I exit the system closes and auto the starts again doing the same thing with the same result, there is no way I can get into the Bios or anything else. i do wish I had done what you had suggested
Biz.Kid09 said:
it is always best to just setup the new PC from fresh
Click to expand...
 
It is odd you can't get into the BIOS, are you smashing the DEL key or equivalent? What PC is it you are using, what brand is the motherboard as it may be a different key we need?
 
i was looking on you tube for help and I followed instructions to hit F2 on start up, a screen came up with different tests to try including BIOS but that did nothing , it's a Dell optiplex 9090, i will check it tomorrow and post it then.
 
i still have not had a straight forward answer to my original question, please bare in mind i know nothing about building pcs , so here we go, when I put in a brand new out of box hard drive
into my pc and then turn on what can i expect to show on my monitor ??
 
If you are using both drives:
It won't see anything different. You'll only see the differences when you go to look for it.
e.g. Going into the BIOS and list all installed hard drives, you will see your new one listed there.
Going into Windows Device Manager, you will see it there.
Going into Windows Disk Manager, you will see it there, and will be able to partition/format it
After it has been partitioned/formatted, you will be able to see it as new drive in Windows 'This PC'.

If you are replacing with a blank drive:
All references to the previous drive will be removed/broken
The drive will not be bootable, and you will need bootable OS installation media (like CD or USB)

If you are replacing with a cloned drive:
The BIOS will see a different drive.
The previous drive will be removed from the list of boot devices.
The new drive will not automatically become a boot device, you need to do that manually.
You won't notice anything different in Windows.

Raymond Bacciochi said:
all i got was message saying (could not find a bootable drive.
Click to expand...
You will need to go into the BIOS and select the new hard disk as the highest priority boot device.
 
Raymond Bacciochi said:
i still have not had a straight forward answer to my original question, please bare in mind i know nothing about building pcs , so here we go, when I put in a brand new out of box hard drive
into my pc and then turn on what can i expect to show on my monitor ??
Click to expand...

You will get the same message with a new drive as you get with your unsuccessfully cloned disk, BIOS will say no boot device found.

When you switch the PC on do you not get a screen saying press F1, F2 or some other keys? If I remember correctly F2 is the BIOS on a Dell bootup
 
Raymond Bacciochi said:
I won't get the new drive delivered until saturday 10th, i will post again then to let you know .
Click to expand...
Will make no difference, the new disk will not have an Operating System installed so the message will be no boot device found, for some reason the cloned disk is not being recognised as a boot device and that's why as the BIOS cannot detect the Operating System so it thinks the cloned disk is blank as well.

Do you have a Windows installation disc or USB drive to boot to?
 
Raymond Bacciochi said:
yes i copied windows from microsoft to my usb drive.
Click to expand...
I would try and install a fresh copy of Windows onto the disk that failed the clone just to make sure your machine can see it properly and also that it's not faulty (if it's faulty you could always try to clone to the new drive you have delivered on the 10th), it'll only take 20 minutes or so and it'll give you a bit of practice in building machines.

Any questions ask and I along with other members will try and assist as much as we can, this is what makes the boards what they are.
 
No worries, honestly mate when you've done it a couple of times you'll wonder why you were so worried, everyone has to start somewhere so don't be afraid to ask even if you think it's stupid as sometimes it takes someone looking at a problem from a different angle to see the issue.
 
well you have put me at ease, thanks I intend to erase my external hard drive which has the clone on it tomorrow and do a clean install on it, can you recommend a software to do the cloning ?
 
I agree that cloning disks tends to be problematic. I know it shouldn't be. A lot of us have done it successfully...it just can be a real pain when you mix sizes, mechanicals, ssds, mbr vs gpt, partitions etc. It's a recipe for mucking things up. My advice would be - especially if you are new to this stuff - do a backup of your existing machine by doing a full system image. Windows will store this image off whereever you want. You can write it off to an external usb hard drive if you like. Then boot up your computer with ONLY the new hard disk drive plugged in when you get it, and a windows bootable USB so you can install windows. Then instead of installing windows, go to the repair option when setup starts. Go to advanced or troubleshooting and in there is an option to restore from system image. If you do that, it's much more reliable than cloning. The problem with cloning software is that it often needs to reboot the machine to finish configuring things, and sometimes during that reboot things can get messed up if boot orders change. As a worst case it can screw up your actual existing windows install. So I would take a system image backup anyway before starting all of this.
 
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