Hard Drive Makes Boot Hang

SeanHellen said:

Just a quick thought...last time i had bad hdd running, i was on the old os (C drive back then) but now im on new os (E drive) it has stopped working. Do you think the bad hdd could have had the drive letter E also and now when i plug them in it conflicts with the new os drive since there would be 2 x E drives going or would it sort it out itself?

Your OS has to be on the C: drive. That is your problem. Windows looks for the C: drive to boot from. You need to either reinstall Windows and make it the C: drive when you install or find some way to change E: to C:.

SeanHellen said:

windows is fine on the e drive...its working, its just the bad hdd. if i do need windows on c, then am i right in thinking this would be how to do it?

-backup work on C drive (somehow...got nowhere to put it lol)
-change C drive letter to X (for example) to free up the C drive letter
-install windows on X drive
-format E Drive and change letter to C
-re-install windows to new C drive
-change X to E
-move work back onto new E drive

So in all reality I have just swapped the drive letters round, but since you cant change a letter if theres windows on that drive, I have to do it the long way

reassigning letters is easy, I can do that through disk management, just trying to find somewhere to store the work whilst i do it...I say work, just a whole load of pics, setups and music, lol

My mistake on Windows having to be on C: It is possible to be on others, just does not happen very often. I do think that the fact Windows is on E: is a cause for your other drive not to work.

SeanHellen said:

I got to admit, having windows back on C drive would be good...computer isnt the only thing thats getting confused lol

Think I might reinstall windows like I said in last post and see what happens..unless any other ideas come to light before then

There is one thing you can do. Download free Macrium Reflect to backup your info. Macrium Reflect FREE Edition - Information and download You can make an image of your OS drive and store it on your storage drive. Do the same with your documents you have. You can switch the drives letters around and then restore to your new C: drive. It does not take that long. I have my OS and programs on one partition and it only uses about 45 GB when Macrium compresses the backup. If you only have your OS, it will take less space. You won't have to go through reinstalling Windows then. Macrium only takes about 20 minutes to restore.

SeanHellen said:

OK, i got me a 25gb image of my E drive (OS Drive) on my C Drive (storage drive), so now i plan to:-

-Change dirve letter of storage drive to X
-format E Drive
-Change to C (as it should be)
-restore from image

Problem lies in the last bit - how do I restore from the image since windows will be gone - do I make the restore disc that its on about and do it from that???

Make the image of Windows with Macrium. When you get through it will ask you to make a Macruim Rescue disk. If it doesn't ask, there is a place on your top menu to do it. It will mention Linux, check that option. To restore your image, insert the Rescue Disk and boot your computer. The Rescue Disk will then boot and give you options to restore your Windows. One thing to beware of, Macrium mixes up the drive letters from what they really are. Make sure you have named the drives. You will have to use the names and ignore the letters. == One final thing that you might check before you do this. Go into BIOS and make sure that your first boot option is your CD and your second is the drive where Windows is. I think you told me you did this earlier, but just thought I would bring it up. You might have to go into BIOS again after the restore and set your boot sequence again. Let us know how it goes.