Industrial computer running DOS 6.22 and Windows 3.11. Hard drive is dying and need to replace.
FDISK and FORMAT/S the replacement as a D: drive (slave). XCOPY/S the C: drive to the D: drive. (Most of the time there are no errors). Remove the old drive, re-jumper, and re-BIOS for only the new drive. The computer will not boot from this drive but will boot from a boot disk in A:. It did boot from the original drive, and when re-installed and re-BIOS'd, with the D: (slave present)boot from C:.

The new drive has everything, including the hidden files. Tried a:\sys c: from the boot disk (new drive only present) and had no luck. All ideas are appreciated.

You need to set the new drive active. FDISK will not make drive D active. You will need to boot from a floppy to this with the new drive as C.

Hi w-f,

Good point.

I don't remember if fdisk will make two actives on two physival drives. You're probably right.

"Tried a:\sys c: from the boot disk (new drive only present) and had no luck."

If that means that the sys worked and it still won't boot, very likely w-f has it nailed.

If at first you don't succeed, you're about average.

M2

I'm missing something.

With the new drive as C: detected with the BIOS utility (and the old drive removed from the system) I ran A:\SYS C: with a boot floppy.

Thought this made it active. If not, how do I make C: active?

Thanks!

To make it active, boot with a floppy and run FDISK and choose option 2. SYS only installs the system files. To make/change the active status in the partition table requires the use of a third party partition manager like Partition Manager.

That was it. Learn something everyday. Thank you very, very much.