New hard drive causes old one to not boot

phobia911

Distinguished
Jan 25, 2008
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18,530
Hi i just got a new western digital caviar blue 7200 rpm 250gb and installed it in my computer.
my old drive is also a wd caviar but i think its 5200 rmp but also 250 gb
when i went to boot from the old drive (both plugged in at the same time) it never got past the boot from cd line of txt that shows before it goes to boot from the hard drive.
i tried changing the boot order of the drives and it did not help
however when i unplug the new drive it works fine
i thought it might be a jumper issue so i researched that and found this: http://www.wdc.com/en/library/eide/2579-001037.pdf which if i understand it correctly says i shouldn't need one
also the new drive makes loud noises that i think are just the head moving but scared me at first b/c i thought for a second it was a head crash
eventually what i want to do is install windows 7 on the new drive and keep xp on the old in a dual boot
however i will not install windows 7 until i know i can boot into the old drive...
also i should note i have a 1tb external drive that is in a docking bay that connects through sata and i can boot with it on no problem
i am lost and need some direction

thanks, phobia
 

Paperdoc

Polypheme
Ambassador
It could be that your BIOS is having trouble communicating with the new drive and, even though it is told NOT to boot from it (and you should set the Boot Priority NOT to try the new drive), it is getting stuck trying to check it during POST.

One way that might happen is that you actually set the Boot Priority to use the new drive as a late-in-the-sequence option, but the drive is empty and the BIOS cannot read anything from it when it tries. Do not have the new drive in the boot sequence at all for now.

Another less-common but possible issue pops up IF you have a combination of a new SATA II drive that communicates at 3.0 Gb/s, plugged into an original SATA controller that only knows 1.5 Gb/s. In that situation the new drive is supposed to figure it out and adjust itself, but some fail to do that. There is a way to force the new drive to slow down to the old original SATA spec, and you can get those details from the WD website. But that is only necessary if you have that new drive / old controller mix.