Installing new HD

Ive got a 250gb hdd that i want to put in my pc with my other 40gb hdd. I put it on the strip, boot up and have no way to access it? I put both of the HDDs on and it didnt boot up, even with winxp cd in the cdrom

 

Greetings, 3525252.

IDE or SATA drives? I'm assuming IDE since you mentioned putting it on 'the strip' - if this is the case, did you check the drive jumpers (the new 250gb should be set as 'Slave', the 40gb as 'Master')?

Can you access BIOS? If so, is the new drive recognized? Some BIOS Setup programs require enabling a new drive (especially SATA drives).

 

^This^

Assuming that you want to keep your 40G HD as your primary disk and you want the 250GB to be a secondary storage area the following applies...

Assuming they are IDE, either your jumper settings are wrong and you have conflicting drives or they are cable select and you system has set the new one to be the master.

If they are SATA then you have your drives plugged in in the wrong order. Your SATA ports should all be numbered. SATA0, SATA1, SATA2.... and so on. your 40GB should be plugged into SATA0 and your 250GB should be plugged into SATA1

If you want to re-install Windows on your 250GB HD then you need to go into the BIOS and change the order in which your system boots from devices so that the CD is first. Note: if you have a recovery CD I doubt you will be able to use this to do a fresh install on a new HD you need a full Windows disk.

Hope this helps.