I am moving two HDs from our server to a new/used tower. The HDs works correctly in the older tower but the CPU runs at only 800MHz and the new one is 3GHz. The master HD has Win2000 on it. The new tower has a HD with XP on it and it works. When I moved the two HDs to the new tower I got the error: inaccessible_boot_disk and the HDs did not show up in the BIOs. The HDs master/slave jumpers were correct and both HDs on the same cable. I tried putting the XP HD back into the new tower and put each of the HDs from the server in as slaves (jumpered correctly) but either got NTLDR problem or disk boot failure. I ended up putting all the drives back to the towers they were originally in and both towers both work correctly. I really need to move the HDs both because of speed and the older tower's power button doesn't always work. Each time it has to be started again I wonder if it will start. Also, we need the data on the HDs from the old server and I don't want to do anything risky that might cause us to lose it.

Did you set the HD detection to auto when you moved the drives to the new tower?

If you're trying to boot to a drive that was in another machine, you'll probably have to do a repair of the OS in order for the OS to run properly. Why not put both drives from the old machine onto the Seconday IDE channel (after setting the jumpers correctly of course. Life's more painless for the brainless.

Are you saying you're trying to boot into the old drives installed to the newer system? If so...you may or may not be successful. Moving drives with an OS on them to a new PC doesn't always work. I've moved hard drives from several different machines around to others during upgrades and testing and it worked fine. Other times I got errors and had to change the IDE controller driver back to a generic one to get it to work. I have one machine that no matter what I do it simply won't let me put a HDD in it with an existing OS on it. Sometimes errors have to do with the IDE controllers for one motherboard not being compatible with another. IF this is the case... you need to first return the old boot drive to its own machine. Then go into Hardware Device manager and go to IDE device controllers. Double click on the IDE controllers line so it opens the tree or click the + and it will open. Double click on the primary IDE controllers and then click DRIVERS. Then at the bottom click DRIVER UPDATE. Then tell it to display a list of all known drivers for this device. Then when it shows you the drivers...chose the default windows IDE driver...which is probably the only one that will show up in the list. This is a generic windows IDE controller driver and it will work with most motherboards to get them up and running. After you've installed the new driver reboot so the change takes effect. Login to the system. It should still work fine with the default IDE controller. Then shut down and remove the drive. Install it in the new system and cross your fingers! IF it works...you should be prompted for new hardware since the old OS was installed to the old server originally and is now going into a new system with a new mobo hardware configuration. You will need to install the motherboard support CD for this new system to make sure the old drive has support drivers for the new system. IF you still get NTLDR errors....which sometimes occur during fresh installs of W2k (least thats where I've seen them) or for other reasons there are topics discussing what to do. MAKE SURE you have a backup of important files from that server hard drive in the event you lose data or are unable to make the swap! I'd save all important files and clone the entire disk just to be safe before you start editing boot sectors if that becomes necessary. Also Make sure the bios is set to detect the drives in the proper order and that Primary and Secondary devices are enabled and set to AUTO Detect. Make sure drive jumpers are set to slave or cable select on the slave drives. As for the Master...Some drives like Western Digital HDDs have a special jumper for MASTER with slave present so if its a WD and you have it set for MASTER...you might need to change to MASTER with slave present if it applies to that specific drive. It will say right in the jumper settings on the drive. If this is a Sata or Raid setup you may have additional issues or require other changes. Sometimes it simply isn't possible to move an old drive to a new system no matter what you do but there are probably a few other things you can do beyond my scope of experience if my advice doesn't help. Here's a nice page on NTLDR and NTDETECT issues if you still have them after trying the above FIRST. http://www.computerhope.com/issues/... GOOD LUCK and let us know how you make out. Dave