Swapping disks between Dells

OspreyO · 28 Jul 2010 at 15:21

I'm trying to move a HD from a Dell Dimension 4400 to a Dell 8300, but the Dell 8300 won't see the drive from the 4400. It knows theres a drive their but can't read it. The drives work fine in their respective original PC's

The 4400 drive is (Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 ST380215A 80GB 7200 RPM 2MB Cache IDE Ultra ATA100 3.5")

and the 8300 existing drive is IC35L090AVV207-0 (Hitachi - Deskstar 80 GB, 7200 RPM, 2MB Cache, Ultra-ATA/100)

Both are set to cable select, though I've also tried master and swapping the cables and IDE port with no success.

I was hoping to save myself re-installing everything again. Its an old machine and I might not have all the passwords. The 8300 is , much faster than the 4400 hence the swap.

lurkio · 28 Jul 2010 at 16:00

Is it not being seen in the Bios screen ?

OspreyO · 28 Jul 2010 at 16:51

No it gives an error F1 or F2 to continue etc. But when you go into the BIOS setup, its detected, "Primary Master Drive: Hard Drive" which is the same for the drive it does recognize. I was expecting the drive number, but perhaps the limited Dell BIOS setup, it doesn't show this on the 8300.

One thing I did notice was that the 8300's original drive has jumper settings for 16/32k I assume this is LBA and its set to 16k. I wonder is that the problem. Though I don't see why a 8300 would have a problem with either setting.

At one point I did get into the XP boot menu but the PC just gets to the splash screen and restarts. I only got that far once or twice. I'll probably just have to bite the bullet and leave the existing drive.

OspreyO · 28 Jul 2010 at 22:52

The thought occurs to me maybe I've a dodgy molex power connector.

OspreyO · 29 Jul 2010 at 01:58

Some googling found the solution.

Dell systems work better on Cable select. Try setting it like that, with the master drive on the black connector, and the slave drive on the grey connector. It should work out like that. After you've done that, go into your BIOS, and light up the NumLock, CapsLock, and ScrollLock lights on your keyboard. Hold <Alt>+F, then hit <Alt>+E. After it stops beeping, hit <Alt>+B, and this will restart your system. That procedure sets your BIOS back to defaults, and it should force the system to redetect all of the IDE drives.

http://www.daniweb.com/forums/post37565.html#post37565

I was dubious but it worked and the machine boots up much faster now.