I recently bought a new 80GB Western Digital hard drive. I also have a Segate 60GB. When I connected both hard drives, windows didn't detect the new one. So, I unconnected my old HDD, formatted the new one, installed XP on it, and it works fine. Now, if I connect just the old HDD, it gives me:

Boot Failure
Insert BOOT diskette in A:
Press any key when ready

If I press any key, it searches, and gives me the same message again. If I now connect both HDDs with the new one as master, and the old one as slave, it boots into windows fine, but doesn't recognise the old one. If I have the old one as master and the new one as slave, it just gives me the error message again. Any help would really be appreciated!

I think you have the classic problem of master and slave settings being wrong. Only one should be set to master and only one set to slave. don't use cs (cable select). If they are set correct and you still have problems try putting one on the other IDE channel (checking the master slave settings on that channel) occassionaly you get a drive that refuses to be either master or slave. Oh and by the way, in the BIOS there is a setting telling the pc which device to boot from, this should obviously be set to the device you intend to boot from

Thanks, I think it may have been that. Because, now in BIOS, if I have both HDDs pluged in, it will detect them. I think that now my problem is that both of them are C:/ drives. Could you tell me how to change the drive letter before you install windows?

Hi, If your cable has Colored Coded connectors then it is CS (CABLE SELECT) and blue goes to the MB, Black to the "MASTER" (Name not jumper) and Gray to the "SLAVE". Both drives must be jumpered CS. Some CS cables will not do "MASTER/SLAVE" (Jumpering not name). If no color code then MASTER and SLAVE is to be plugged. Windoze sets Drive Letter. Very doubtful that it would set two C:'s. Letters are set in the order that drives are found on POST. MASTER on port one is first checked and would be C:. Hope this helps a little, Jim

Thanks, I think I've got my jumper settings right. Tell me if this looks good:

Primary Master: Main HDD
Primary Slave: 2nd HDD
Secondary Master: DVD drive

I don't think that windows actually set two C:'s, but when I plugged both hdd's in at first, something happened to windows on the old hdd, so I had to install windows on the new hdd, while it was still C:. So now I have two C: drives.

Let me know if you think this will fix it. I'm going to install windows on an older(5gb) hdd. Then format my new hdd. Then boot up windows with both hdds, and when windows assigns the new one a different letter, install windows on it. So the new one should stay as the different letter. Anyone think this'll work?