Helping my son put in a SATA Western Digital Caviar SE16 HDD. He has one functioning IDE HDD w/ OS now. We tried (and failed) to install the new 250 GB so we could partition it and install XP on it, to become his primary drive. The WD utility allowed us to partition it w/ no problem, but there is some doubt as to whether we need to set it up as a bootable drive or "secondary storage drive", seeing as how XP will be installed on it. The biggest problem is that the machine wants to boot from the new drive - and of course can't. His BIOS has listings for SATA Primary and Secondary. The MB has markings on the SATA connectors of SATA-0 and SATA-1. The BIOS has usual IDE Primary & Slave listings. No matter which SATA port we connected the new HDD to (and disabled the other SATA in BIOS), it still tried to boot from the new HDD. I think the WD utility actually may have tried to copy his old drive to the new one, although it was NOT clear that was what it was going to do. How should we set it up or proceed in order to keep his old HDD for now as the bootable OS drive, but still be able to install XP to the new drive? Any help is appreciated.

Edit: The computer did not boot from his XP installation disk. If there was supposed to be a prompt to enter XP setup (before Windows starts) when the machine booted, we missed it. I suppose that means we'll have to set the CD to boot 1st in BIOS, assuming we didn't just miss the prompt when it came up? We also got an XP message on one try that it couldn't install because there was a newer version already installed.

I'm a little confused. You say you want this new drive to be your new OS drive and that the system is attempting to boot from when you start the computer - that is what you want to happen. The next step would be to boot the machine using the XP installation disc and install Windows on the new drive. Personally, I see no reason to use WD's software to format and partition the drive. The Windows setup would allow you to do that. And, yes, you should ensure the CD comes before the hard drives in the boot sequence int he BIOS. Typically you get a 5-20 second window in which to "Press any key to boot from CD". Depending upon your machine you *may* need to have SATA drivers on a floppy in order to proceded through the installation. You can go ahead and give it a try and if Windows doesn't see the SATA drive, then you will need to download the drivers and try again - watch for "Press F6 to install 3rd party drivers" (or something to that effect at the beginning of the Windows setup. You will then be asked for the driver disk later in the setup. Michael J

Thanks Michael, You're right about not using WD's tools. They're worthless in this case. Support said their tools (NOR their tech support) support or advise on dual boot systems. Their tool "automatically" tried (failed) to copy all his old OS & files to the new HDD. That is why the pc is trying (failing) to boot from it. Got steps to wipe the failed copied files from the new HDD & start over. But, their tools can't set up the (temporarily) dual boot system, so will have to use another means. Can you advise on either XP's setup program's capability for setting up a dual boot: 1) when there are 2 physical disks involved, and 2) when BOTH disks will have bootable copies of XP on them. There's also XP's Disk Management Tool, but I don't know if it will handle dual boot situations. ***IMPORTANT: Is it going to be a problem installing 2 bootable copies of XP on the 2 separate HDDs? Most of what I've read from MS in past ONLY addresses installing XP and SOME OTHER OS in dual boot. I use Partition / Boot Magic, but he doesn't have it. With it, I've made COPIES of XP partitions, but not tried to INSTALL a 2nd copy of XP, as he is needing to do.

I am not sure I exactly understand what you are trying to do, but if it was me. I would take the old hdd out of the machine, install the new sata drive and install the OS on that drive. I would then add the second drive (IDE) as a slave, then copy off any and all files I wanted saved to the new drive. I would then probably wipe the second drive completely to get rid of the OS and extra copies of files that you moved, then just use the second drive for additional storage or backup or whatever you want.

By your method of taking out the old HDD, once he puts the old one back in, can XP or some MS tool then allow him to dual boot, choosing between the 2 HDDs, each w/ a bootable copy of XP? What he's trying to do is keep the old HDD & OS functional (because they use the computer for some work related things) until he gets the new HDD & new install of XP & necessary applications up & running. Seems pretty reasonable. If time (and being able to use the pc in the mean time) wasn't an issue, the way you describe is easiest. Surely, he can't be the only person that wanted to install a new HDD & clean OS, AND keep using his old OS for a few days?? Thanks for the help!

I think dual boot is a bad way to go. If you installed the IDE srive as the secondary drive then Windows would not work on that drive because it would no longer be the C: drive. And, if you were to install Windows on the SATA drive with the IDE drive still as the primary boot drive, then you could not simply remove the IDE drive w/o breaking the SATA installation. I would suggest getting an imaging program and simply imaging the IDE drive to the SATA drive, then setup the SATA drive as the primary boot drive. You should then have everything on the SATA drive EXACTLY as it exists on the IDE drive. Michael J