Friends hard drive problem, need help quick!

[Richeh]

Hello, I had all my new parts delivered today and decided to donate some to my friend.

Basically he originally had a 80GB WD HDD and a 40GB. I gave him a new 160GB IDE hard drive (both of his others are IDE as well as he is using an MSI Neo 2 Platinum).

Now we did it this way as he had files on both drives and could only keep 2 (2 being used by DVD and CD-RW, and then 2 IDE for Hard Drive).

We installed Windows XP Pro on the 160 with 2 partitions, one 50GB and one 100GB. Using the 40GB as the second drive he moved all his valuable files to the 100GB partition. Next he unplugged the 40 and plugged in the 80GB (Which has his previous Windows installation on) it booted into the 160GB fine and he copied his files to the 100GB partition. Now heres the difficult bit, he rebooted and swapped the 160 and 80 around as the 80GB is a lot faster than the 160 so I told him to use that as the main Windows drive.

Problem is the 80GB is fine on its own but as soon as he plugs in the 160GB it starts to load into Windows and then restarts. We have all the jumper settings correct but it keeps doing it and I have no idea why.

Basically he wants this to happen:

Have the 80GB as his main Windows Drive and have the 160GB as storage. Problem is I think the Windows installation on the 50GB partition on the 160 is causing a conflict or something which is making it reboot. He never gets the chance to get into Windows and format it so I don't know what to do.

Help!

Cheers

 

[basmic]

You sure the 80gb is jumpered as a Master, and the 160gb is jumpered as a Slave? Even if they are on CS (Cable Select), change them to what I said.

If Windows still doesn't like the 160gb drive, boot into Windows from the XP drive and turn off "Automatically restart" in the Startup and Recovery options and see what the error message says.

 

[Richeh]

Right, tried a different IDE cable and booted from CD and detected both drives. Now we tried to install windows on the 80GB and it starts up but goes into the disk checker gets to about 55% of stage one and keeps rebooting.

Eugh, really lost for ideas now help!

 

[BENdage]

You could try fixboot from the recovery console, but if it cant complete a disk check then the drive may be dying. Did anything else get knocked when you were doing all the switching over? You could try reseating the memory and graphics card and clearing bios as a starting point...

 

[Richeh]

We have established the drive is dead lol

Tried it again and sounds like a jet taking off and crashing. Is too bad but his whole CD collection was on there. Only himself to blame as the drive he had it on before he cut and pasted onto the 160GB instead of copying lol

Cheers for the help anyway.