Need Help Please! With my Hard Drive

Vengeance

Ok I got a new PC like 2 days ago. I got another compaq, yes go ahead and laugh if you want! But I love it! After I put my 9700 Pro in it I got 15610 points in 3Dmark 2001! And that is with out tweeking windows or overclocking my card.

Not bad for a Compaq

But now onto my little problem. My new Compaq came with a 120gig Hard Drive. Its a Samsung something or another It says its an ultra something! Not sure now. But anyways I wanted to use my 80gig Westerne Digital with 8MB cashe in stead.
So I took out the 120gig and set it as a slave and set my 80gig WD as the master.
Put in the disks to formate and reinstall the OS and programs.

And it gets to the point where it says

"Finalizing Recovery"

And then it hangs there. I did this 2 times lastnight. On the seconed time I finsed installing all 6 recovery CDs and went to bed.
When I got up samething. Its just setting there saying Finalizing Recovery!

So then this morning before work I tryed my regular windows XP CD, hit format drive, and then go to install windows on it, It goes through everything copying files and stuff then gets to where it says 33 minutes to go and it freeze's there. So when I get home from work tonight I going to set my 120gig back to master and take out the 80gig for now.

Anyone have a clue as to what might be wrong with my WD hard drive.

It worked just fine in my other PC set as the master.
Now I cant seem to format it.

Veridian3

1. Make sure the jumpers on the WD drive are set to master (dual) not master (single), as some WD drives have settings depending on if you have 1 or 2 drives.

2. Format the drive using the western digital software that comes with the drive


Stu

Necrosis

Hmm...

Since it's a Compaq were all the drives set to "cable select", if so set them back and try it that way.

Vengeance

"Necrosis"
Cool name bud, it sounds painfull


I dont really remember how the samsung was set up

But im going to look up the samsung one on the web and try and find out. What does cable select mean any way.

Necrosis

Basically where ever the drive is it's orientation. Farthest connector - master, and closest to MB secondary.

shuki

I would take out the 120 altogether for now. stick in only the 80 making sure its set to Master and give it a go with only your winXP cd. If it freezes again, do try either jumper free (take it off altogether) or cable select method. Get your OS installed then focus on your 120 drive. Though if both have an OS installed on them and you try to boot up that may give you troubles too so you may want to wipe mr. 120 clean, then remove it and put on 80 WD and OS. I would not go much further installing stuff though until you get master slave bit sorted.....

Vengeance

Got it Buddy Thats what the problem was! I was trying to install windows on a HDD and I already have windows on the other one Windows just wont do it

But after I took out the 120 gig Im good to go now Thanks everyone!!!