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Switching Hard Drives?

I want to put my hard drive in another computer that is faster. this is a windows 2000 computer. when i load up the computer and tell it to boot from the hard disk it says there's an error. the hard drive is fine and when i boot to a live ubuntu cd i can access the files inside of it just fine. why wont this let me boot it up. is there something i need to tell it to do before switching them? thanks.

2 Answers

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  • 1 decade ago
    Favorite Answer

    You need to set the boot priority i belv.

    You can get that thing by hitting DEL repeatedly right after you power it on.

  • 5 years ago

    Hmm, not as easy as it might sound. If you're booting from your master (ie. if Windows is installed on it and loads from it), then you'll have a slight problem - you'll need to install Windows on the 2nd drive before you set it to be the master. Alternatively, try copying all important data from the current master to the current slave, reformat the current master and reinstall Windows on it. Of course, if there are multiple user accounts, or many programs and settings you want to keep, this isn't always a viable option. When you say that master is "starting to act up", what do you mean? If you have pop-ups, slow downs, or other seemingly disk-related problems, perhaps a spyware/malware scan (try Ad-Aware, Spybot Search & Destroy) might be a good start. Also check for unnecessary background services (if you need help on this, feel free to ask). If you are still going to swap the drives, you WILL need to install Windows on the current slave (after the swap, boot off your Windows CD and install as normal... all your data will remain on that drive so long as you don't format it during setup). To swap, just do as the other post... make sure the jumpers are set correctly (master/slave) and boot... Windows should sort the rest! Good luck!

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