Can't boot Dimension 8400 from new cloned drive

I have a Dell Dimension 8400, with a WCD WD1600JD-75HBB0 hdd. Receiving OS messages & BSODs with BBCode 8086 suggesting immanent hdd failure. Called Newegg.com, was told WD does not produce WD1600JD any longer, suggested equivalent size/platter speed WD1600AAJS as a replacement. Installed, identified bare disk hdd in System BIOS, booted into Windows XP Pro SP3 A03, and successfully cloned disk using Acronis True Image Home 2011. New product did not contain any instructions, and I forgot to remove old hdd on first reboot after cloning -- resulted in BSOD complaining of IRQ conflict. Removed old drive from BIOS, rebooted, but BIOS now complains can't find bootable media. I can swap back to old drive and boot ok, but any combination involving new drive (new only; old=drv0, new=drv1; new=drv0, old=drv1) will not boot. Subsequent call to WD tech sppt: agent said -- for RAID configurations -- must replace WD model-revision with identical WD model-revision, can't simply substitute equivalent size/platter speed. Questions: 1) Is WD tech sppt correct? 2) Dim 8400 is capable of supporting RAID, but is *my* machine configured for RAID? I have not changed any RAID settings, and have always assumed I'm using 1-disk SATA.  BIOS settings say "Autodetect/AHCI" (default). 3) Online & in manuals, Dell documentation specifies moving original drive to 2nd drive bay & installing new drive in 1st bay.  Can see this might be important for PATA Master/slave connections, but not for SATA -- correct? 4) Any idea why I can't boot from new hdd? Thanks!

WD support is wrong.  You can replace with another drive and it does NOT even have to be from WD.

However it MUST BE at least the same size or LARGER than the original.  Thats for Raid.

For intelligent cloning the size of the data is what matters.

MUST SET DRIVES FOR RAID AUTO ATA  not RAID AUTO AHCI.

XP Does not like AHCI.

In older bios the setting might say LEGACY or Performance.  You must choose Legacy.

There will be an F6 diskette driver to install if you are starting over.

Unless you slipstream the drivers OR you F6 floppy install them AHCI is a non starter.

Your Drive could be bad and the clone has Bad Data.

You should be able to boot from XPSP2 CD and do a repair install.

Otherwise you will have to start over and do a clean install.

The Boot.ini may hold clues as to the problem.

You could try the /fixboot option from the repair console.

There is no 5 minute one line explanation to all of the above.

You will have to learn how to fix the install or start over.

You have to use the text mode F6 floppy diskette during the initial setup.

The Dimension 8400 and XPS Gen 3 (and Precision Workstation 370) may be configured with a RAID hard disk system. 
If so, a special driver is required.  During the installation of Windows XP the second screen displayed shows
the following:


Press F6 if you need to install a third party SCSI or Raid Driver . . .

The Windows Setup screen appears again with the message Setup will load support for
the following mass storage devices(s):.
This time it lists the Intel(R)82801FR SATA RAID Controller.


At this point the user should press F6 to install the driver.  
The instructions for creating and using the driver on floppy diskette are here.

Intel® Matrix Storage Manager 32-bit Floppy Configuration Utility ...

Users who do not have a RAID disk system may see an error message during installation indicating
that there are no hard drives present in the system.   If this occurs a change in the BIOS is required.  
Restart the system and press F2 to enter the system bios. 
In the main bios screen scroll down to drives
and press or + to expand the drive menu then scroll down to
"SATA Operation" and press .  Change the SATA operation mode to
"RAID Auto/ATA" press ESC to save and exit the bios. 
After making this change, Windows XP should install without a problem.

You can get a reinstallation guide specific to your Dell here

<ADMIN NOTE: Broken link has been removed / replaced from this post by Dell>

http://support.dell.com/support/topics/global.aspx/support/software_reinstall/en/index?c=us&cs=19&l=en&s=dhs&~ck=mn

http://support.dell.com/support/topics/global.aspx/support/dsn/en/document?docid=E81426A4BCE5D9DFE030030ABD623905&c=us&l=en&s=gen

Dell Solution Network: Knowledge Base Article   Hard Drive Error Message Installing Microsoft® Windows® XP Journal ID:    09194DSPLG Article ID:   274506 Date Published:   1/7/2008 Last Revised:   5/2/2008 Table of Contents  Description  Configure the "SATA Operation" Setting in the Computer BIOS » Description The following error message may appear when installing Windows XP on a Dell Dimension 8400 computer: Setup did not find any hard disk drives installed in your computer. Setup cannot continue. To quit, press F3 This issue may occur if the following conditions are true: The computer has a Serial ATA (SATA) hard disk drive. The SATA hard disk drive is not configured as a member of a Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks (RAID) array.   Note:     A RAID array is generally used as a fault-tolerant hard disk drive configuration. For example, two hard disk drives may be configured as a mirror set. This kind of RAID array is known as RAID 1. In this kind of RAID array, information on one hard disk drive is duplicated on the second hard disk drive.   The SATA Operation option in the computer Basic Input Output System (BIOS) is set to RAID Auto/AHCI instead of RAID Auto/ATA. This issue does not indicate a hardware problem. This is a configuration issue. By default, a Dell Dimension 8400 computer is configured to start (boot) from the RAID array. To start the computer from a SATA hard disk drive that is not a member of a RAID array, the BIOS settings must be modified. To resolve this issue, modify the computer BIOS to set the SATA Operation option to RAID Auto/ATA. This article contains step-by-step instructions to perform this action. Back to Top » Configure the "SATA Operation" Setting in the Computer BIOS By default, the SATA Operation setting in the computer BIOS is set to RAID Autodetect/AHCI. To change this setting to RAID Autodetect/ATA, follow these steps: Start the computer. When the F2 = Setup message appears in the upper-right corner of the screen, press the key to enter the computer Setup program.

If memory serves the 8400 series had a different colored SATA plug on the Motherboard for the C:\ Hard Drive. Look and make sure the Hard Drive you are wanting to boot from, C:\ is plugged into this port on the Motherboard. I would also keep the original drive out of the machine while trying to sort this out. Windows does not like two hard drives, both containing an operating system. It will turn one of the disks off. If you can boot to a command prompt with your XP disk or another bootable disk you can check to see if the new hard drive is being recognized by the computer. At the command prompt enter the following:

Diskpart (Enter)

List Disk  (Enter)

You will see all disk that can be seen offline and online listed

If the disk is shown but shown as offline.....

Select Disk (x) X being the disk number shown as being off line (Enter)

Online Disk (Enter)  .....Wait

You should receive a message the disk is now on line

Exit (Enter)

Reboot Machine and see if it now works.

Thanks for the input -- haven't had time to try your fix yet, but I will report here.

You are correct about this. My 8400 had problems with a new disk when I was upgrading to Win 7. I found that the boot drive had to be Drive 0 or it would not boot. I did not have a RAID setup but the second drive had to be connected to the SATA 2 port on the motherboard--not sata 1. Ports are marked on the motherboard. Drive 0 is colored green and is side by side to drive 2. Clearly marked on the mb.

How to clone a SATA boot drive with Acronis True Image Home 11 -- OK, here is the fix that worked for me.  First off, I found references on teh internets about how other techniques "worked better" than the cloning function, or how other processes "were preferred" to cloning, so let me say that in my experience a standard, full disk / partitions backup followed by a full restore to a new disk = WORKS, whereas cloning <> WORKS.

So:

1. install new drive, connect to SATA port 2
2. startup, press F2 for BIOS setup
3. notice original boot disk (on SATA port 0) is BIOS drive 0 -- set new BIOS drive 2 to "on", continue boot up
4. backup the original boot disk to a 3rd drive (I had an external drive already setup as my backup target)
5. restore the backup to the new disk
6. shutdown, pull old drive off of SATA port 0, switch new drive to SATA port 0
7. restart, press F2 for BIOS setup
8. notice new boot disk (on SATA port 0) is now BIOS drive 0 -- set drive 2 to "off", continue boot up
9. rejoice

Thank you gator6x4 and Mary G -- your suggestion about the boot drive needs to be connected to SATA port 0 appears to be correct.  Now that I have my system working I haven't deliberately tried changing back to another SATA port, but it does certainly boot from port 0.

Also, thank you to SpeedStep re: WD support advice.  My relacement disk happens to be from WD, and is the ame size -- but it is not the same model or revision.

The other elements of everyone's advice is probably useful in various situations, but my main problem turned out to be trying to use Acronis' cloning function.