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kpmccarthy

11 Posts

8726

April 4th, 2005 14:00

Hard Drive Mystery

Inspiron 8500.  Purchased 80 GB Hitachi as replacement for original drive.  Using a USB "drive-copy" kit, I am able to Ghost the old drive to the new drive.  Once I remove the old drive and seat the new drive, I get the "no boot drive" error.  The drive is obviously good since it shows up as a USB drive.  The motherboard is obviously good since it sees the old drive.  I have updated the bios....  Any ideas?

funtoupgrade

937 Posts

April 4th, 2005 15:00

Sounds to me like the new drive does not have the C: partition marked as active.  This can be done with FDISK or a program like Partition Magic.

funtoupgrade

kpmccarthy

11 Posts

April 4th, 2005 15:00

I haven't tried the "optical drive problem" approach, but will do so.  Since the original drive works without fail, I don't think that the optical drive would cause a problem only with the new drive.  Will report back.  I would still appreciate any ideas.  Thanks. 

rickmktg

11.9K Posts

April 4th, 2005 15:00


@kpmccarthy wrote:
Inspiron 8500.  Purchased 80 GB Hitachi as replacement for original drive.  Using a USB "drive-copy" kit, I am able to Ghost the old drive to the new drive.  Once I remove the old drive and seat the new drive, I get the "no boot drive" error.  The drive is obviously good since it shows up as a USB drive.  The motherboard is obviously good since it sees the old drive.  I have updated the bios....  Any ideas?


It's likely that you did not remove the blade adapter from the pins (carefully) of the old drive and put it on the new drive (carefully).

rickmktg

11.9K Posts

April 4th, 2005 15:00


@kpmccarthy wrote:
The blade adaptor is attached.  I've tried the drive in the cradle, out of the cradle, screws in, screws out, even placed a piece of paper behind drive to insure that it was all the way forward in the cradle.  I have placed the blade adaptor snug against the drive, halfway on the pins....  I feel that the problem it is in the adaptor/mb area; but can reconcile the fact that it all works fine with the original drive.  I can't blame the drive since it is readilty recognized by Ghost, EZ-Drive when attached via USB. 


Did you do a drive to drive copy or did you Ghost only the C partition?

kpmccarthy

11 Posts

April 4th, 2005 15:00

The blade adaptor is attached.  I've tried the drive in the cradle, out of the cradle, screws in, screws out, even placed a piece of paper behind drive to insure that it was all the way forward in the cradle.  I have placed the blade adaptor snug against the drive, halfway on the pins....  I feel that the problem it is in the adaptor/mb area; but can reconcile the fact that it all works fine with the original drive.  I can't blame the drive since it is readilty recognized by Ghost, EZ-Drive when attached via USB. 

kpmccarthy

11 Posts

April 4th, 2005 16:00

No jumpers.

funtoupgrade

937 Posts

April 4th, 2005 16:00

No. Any chance the drive is jumpered as a slave rather than single?
 
funtoupgrade

kpmccarthy

11 Posts

April 4th, 2005 16:00

I've done a drive to drive copy using Apricorn EZ-Drive, used Ghost 9.0 copying all partitions; and even used Seagate's downloadable drive copy program.  No luck with any of them.

kpmccarthy

11 Posts

April 4th, 2005 16:00

The drive does not show up in the bios setup.  Would an inactive partition cause that?

kpmccarthy

11 Posts

April 4th, 2005 16:00

I wrote Hitachi, pardon my Japaneese, its actually a Toshiba MK8025GAS/HDD2188.

leduke30

4K Posts

April 5th, 2005 06:00

Some Toshiba drives were tweaked to make them proprietory for Compaqs and other brand laptops, and you are not the first POSTer with this problem. You might try jumpering the drive with a cable select position jumper, but it may not help. I don't know if there is a remedy for this problem. You should talk with Toshiba support.

leduke30

4K Posts

April 5th, 2005 17:00

Pure horse pucky from Toshiba! If you can return the drive, I would. The 8500 is more than capable of handling that capacity harddrive. Did you try a Cable Select jumper?

kpmccarthy

11 Posts

April 5th, 2005 17:00

Toshiba is suggesting that the motherboard/bios is not compatible with an 80 GB drive.  I have bios version A06 (Inspiron 8500).  From my prepurchase research, I did not find such a limitation.  Did I miss something?
 

kpmccarthy

11 Posts

April 5th, 2005 18:00

Haven't tried the cable select yet.  Will do so ASAP.  I figured Toshiba was just trying to pass the buck; but, wanted to confirm that there wasn't some quirk with the 8500 that I missed.  Thanks. 
 
Will post results of jumper select and follow up with Toshiba.
 

kpmccarthy

11 Posts

April 9th, 2005 00:00

Jumpered the drive for cable select option and that did the trick.  Toshiba support told me to send the drive back. 

Thanks for all your input. 

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