Hardrive recognition

[disruptorsignals]

Well I was having problems with this one 40 gig hardrive and machine_check_expectations. The only way I could find to fix was to reinstall windows on my 160 gig sata drive, but it was partitioned for windows so not that big a deal.

So I unplugged to 40 gig and then setup and reinstalled xp pro on my 160 gig sata with no problems. Then I get windows updated and running and I plug in my 40 gig to rescue some files and reformat. I rescued the files and go to format, but it gets like 90% through and then fails. So I checked my disk manager and it says my system drive is my 40 gig which is wrong since I have windows on my C:/ partition on my 160 gig sata. How can I reformat this 40 gig and make my C:/ the boot and system drive like it should be with out crashing my comp and having to reformat windows?

 

[airfoil]

Change the boot order in the BIOS to make the 160 gig drive the first boot drive. If at all possible, dont allow the BIOS to list the 40 gig drive in the order at all.

 

[disruptorsignals]

I checked the bios and it was already listed last for hardrive priority and I could find no way to take it off the list. Any other suggestions??

 

[airfoil]

I do recall there is a way to prevent a drive from being listed in the boot order - I'll have to restart to find that out.

Have you tried deleting the partition on the 40 gig from Disk Management?

 

[disruptorsignals]

I'm not sure how to delete a partition from disk management I looked but couldn't find that option. Though I don't want to reformat the 40 gig till I change the listing of this drive in disk management as the system drive because I believe this will cause a system failure. I still don't understand how this drive can be listed in the disk management as my system drive since all it contains are media files and no system files.

Thanks for you suggestion please keep them coming. I believe I could format the drive from the windows xp repair dos screen, but I have had a similiar problem with this drive and when I reformated like that it killed my os and I had to restart.

 

[Rottie]

make sure you back up your beloved data before you delete partition.