Replacing Failed Hard Drive on Dimension 8400

cindyw55

That sounds doable. Replace the SATA hard drive, reinstall windows, drivers and applications on the new drive and after you have fully patched it and the drive is running to your satisfaction, install the 'old' drive as the 'slave' and transfer the data to the new C:/ drive.

A second SATA data cable will be needed, there should be a spare SATA power connector inside the case.

Bev.


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What makes you think the drive has failed? Did you run hard drive diagnostics that confirmed that? That error message means the system files are damaged and not a hard drive failure. Those system files can be fixed. You can use the Recovery Console on the XP cd by booting to the XP disk. Read this: http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;822705

Thanks for the advice.  I guess I didn't explain good enough.  The first problem was the corrupt file.  I spent1 1/2 hours on the phone with Dell Tech Support trying to restore the files.  Nothing we tried worked.  The tech told me the only option was to reinstall windows which meant losing everything on the hard drive.  I couldn't do that.  That's why we decided to buy a new drive, install XP on the new drive and try to use the old drive as a slave to at least get access to the files on it.  I did run diagnostics on the old drive and received some errors. 

 

I've installed the new drive and am now in the process of installing XP on it.  Once that is done, I will install the old drive and see if I can read it to copy the files over.  I'm just not sure how to do that.  Do I need special software or anything?  Sorry for the stupid questions.  I've never done this kind of thing before.

 

Thanks to both you and Bev for responding to my questions.

cindyw55

You can use either XP's send to menu, click here for details, or right click the file and drag it to 'My Documents' in the new C:/ drive.

Bev.


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Thanks for all your help with this.

 

I got the new hard drive installed and functioning.  I put the old drive back in and seems to be working.   I can see the drive and the files. 

 

One more question.  If we move all the files from the old drive (E:) to the new drive (C:), do we have to reinstall all our applications?  For example, we have Turbo Tax.  We can see everything on the E: drive, but we can't bring the program up.  If we copy everything over to the new drive, should it work?

 

Thanks again.

 

Cindy

cindyw55

Applications and programs need be reinstalled from their CD's or downloaded from the publisher's website.

The only way to avoid this, is to clone the exsisting hard drive to new drive, using an imaging utility.

Bev.


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I know this is an old resolved issue, but i am sooooooooooooo happy that Cindy was able to install a new hard drive and get it working....

I had ( have) the same problem...

Config error...

So I went and bought a new hard drive from Dell...put it in.....and I can't for the life of me get rid of the "boot device not found" issue.

lol....

But I'm happy for Cindy....