Reformatting an old Laptop HD

[MameMaster!]

Help!....I have an old laptop HD that I just put into an enclosure.
But when I attach it to my PC.....it literally resets my entire PC and won't let me reformat the old HD.

I'm guessing this is because the old HD still has window XP on it....and when it's attached to the PC I'm thinking that it tries to boot the version of XP on the HD........(and yes I've tried this on more than 1 PC).

Any suggestions on what may be the issue ? or how to reformat the HD?

Help!.....and thanks in advance for any suggestions.

MameMaster! 

[mrhowell]

If you boot up on a floppy, does it show up in DOS?

[MameMaster!]

If you boot up on a floppy, does it show up in DOS?

I don't have a boot disk readily available....but couldn't I just go into command line?....or would I have to use the boot disk to force it into DOS.
I was thinking along those lines to.

Assuming I can force it into DOS.....what would be the command to reformat the drive? (and obviously I don't want to accidently reformat my main drive!)

[AmericanDemon]

Set it up as a slave drive.

[Sephroth57]

yea is it possible your running it as master? im assuming your adding this as extra storage, your PC is probably trying to boot off it. put in a windows CD and like pretend youre gonna install it and use the format feature on there

[USSEnterprise]

DOS Command for reformat is usually FORMAT (insert drive letter here):

[shmokes]

Be careful about putting in the Windows CD.  When you get to the part about choosing a partition make damned sure that the size of the drive you select matches the size of the laptop hard drive so you don't wipe your computer's C drive.

But I agree, if you're plugging it into your computer in addition to your regular drive I think it's set to be master (which frankly I don't know how to set that on a laptop drive.  I'd guess there's a dip switch).

Try unplugging your CD/DVD drive and plugging the hard drive into that cable.  I'm pretty sure that if you've got two hard drives, both set to Master, but one plugged into the primary channel (likely marked IDE 0 on your motherboard) and one plugged into the secondary (IDE 1) that it will boot to the drive plugged into the Primary IDE channel.  Once you've booted into Windows XP click on the Start button, right-click on My Computer, click [Disk Management].  You will see all of your drives, including your laptop drive.  In the bottom section where you see "Disk 0", Disk 1", etc. find your laptop drive, right-click it and choose format (NTFS, not FAT 32).

That's only going to be a temporary fix, though, if you're planning to have it hooked up to the same cable as your main hard drive.  You really need to figure out how to set the laptop drive to be a slave.  Maybe the switch/jumper is on the enclosure.

If you can't get it to be a slave, but it works fine when plugged into the secondary IDE port, you can always pick up a PCI hard drive controller card that will give you a couple more IDE ports.  They're really cheap if you don't need anything special like RAID. 

But right now it sounds like the problem is that you've got two drives plugged into the same cable and they're both set to Master.

[JB]

Try unplugging your CD/DVD drive and plugging the hard drive into that cable.  I'm pretty sure that if you've got two hard drives, both set to Master, but one plugged into the primary channel (likely marked IDE 0 on your motherboard) and one plugged into the secondary (IDE 1) that it will boot to the drive plugged into the Primary IDE channel. 

You're right, but assume his optical drive is master on a  secondary channel instead of slave on the primary.

Enclosure to me implies external USB drive. Particularly he said tha thwne he plugs the drive in, the machine reboots. I certainly HOPE he's not hot-swapping internal drives.

[USSEnterprise]

If you are unsure of which drive you are formatting, DISCONNECT YOUR MAIN C DRIVE fro the IDE cable, so there's no chance of formatting it

[shmokes]

Hmm...I hadn't thought of that simply because I recently bought some internal laptop drive enclosures that act as adapters to plug them into regular IDE cables.  That and he suggested that the computer was trying to boot to the drive.  But you're right.  A USB enclosure is much more common.

If this laptop is a USB device that's going to be a lot tougher.  I'm not sure, and kind of doubt, that USB mass storage drivers are loaded when the Windows XP disc starts up, so formatting there might not even be an option.  Can you try plugging it into another computer?  If it does the same thing to another computer I'd tend to think that it might be a problem with the enclosure.  If it doesn't I'd guess you've got a broken Windows installation on your computer.  I would tend to think that chances of a bad drive forcing Windows to reboot would be pretty low.  I mean....if the machine is trying to boot to the drive, yeah, but if you're already loaded into Windows and plug it in via USB, I think you'd be looking at a bad enclosure or a bad computer.

If it is a USB drive and you are plugging it into a computer already booted into Windows XP the computer would not attempt to boot to the drive.  However, if the computer IS a USB drive being plugged in while booted into XP already try this. 

- Get your computer all booted up and then plug in the drive and let it restart the computer, then unplug the drive so it boots back into Windows.
- Click Start  -->  Control panel 
- If the background of your control panel is blue (or any color other than white) click Switch to Classic View in the upper-left corner.  Otherwise go to next step.
- Double-click Administrative Tools
- Double-click Event Viewer
- Take a look in the Application and System logs.....Hopefully you will see an event, probably with a yellow or red warning sign, giving you a hint about what exactly is crashing and what the problem might be.  They each have a time and date, so it will be easy to associate the logged even with the computer crash.

[MameMaster!]

Hey Schmokes...thanks for really putting some thought into this I appreciate it!

....yes, this is a old laptop HD that I put into a USB enclosure.

I think you guys may be right about slave/master. I'm assuming that it has dips but it didn't even occur for me to check.

....but basically as you guys have figured out from my post.....when I plug in the USB external enclosure drive (with the old laptop HD) it literally restarts my entire computer (again, this happened on 2 PCs).

If I can't get it to work...I may just try bringing it over to CompUSA and see if they can figure it out (and protect my valuable PC and Mame

[shmokes]

I could be wrong here....maybe the enclosure requires the harddrive be set to master, but I really don't think it's a master/slave thing.  That would apply to plugging two harddrives into the same IDE cable (those big ribbon cables inside a desktop machine). 

I tend to think you've got a defective enclosure if it's crashing two separate machines.  Like I said, I can't say that master/slave settings are unimportant for an enclosure cos I just don't know that, but generally speaking that would apply to a situation where you were plugging in a hard drive to an IDE port along with another drive on the same cable.

Windows is definitely not trying to boot the Windows on the drive when you plug the drive in.

[Stingray]

Do you have a Mac available? If so you might try plugging it into the Mac. If there's a problem with the drive you should be prompted to reformat it. The Mac OS can format it in PC format. If there's nothing wrong with it, it should just show up on your desktop and you can reformat it normally. If nothing happens, or the Mac locks up, or something else strange happens, this would confirm to me that there is indeed a problem with the drive or the enclosure. HTH.

-S

[MameMaster!]

Do you have a Mac available? If so you might try plugging it into the Mac. If there's aproblem with the drive you should be prompted ot reformat it. The Mac OS can format it in PC format. If there's nothing wrong with it, it should just show up on your desktop and you can reformat it normally. If nothing happens, or the Mac locks up, or something else strange happens, this would confirm to me that there is indeed a problem with the drive or the enclosure. HTH.

-S

....I do have a mac at work...but it's literally brand new....if I messed it up.....my boss would mess me up.

I'll have to see if we have an old mac as a test bed....since we just upgraded...I'm sure we have one.

Thanks for suggestion....I'll try that tomorrow.

[Stingray]

Wow, you use a Mac at work and a PC at home. I use a PC at work and a Mac at home. Maybe we should trade jobs.

-S

[shmokes]

Just do it.

A. number 1, it ain't going to screw anything up.  The end.

B. number 2, if it did (and refer to A. number 1 -- it will not) you would just scratch your head.  It's brand new.  Worst case scenario is you'll put in the recovery discs and set it back to its out of the box state.

But keep in mind that B. number 2 WILL NOT HAPPEN.  You cain't kill your mac by plugging in a USB hard drive.

[Stingray]

Yeah, I agree with Shmokes. Either it will work or it won't. Worst case the Mac might lock up trying to read the drive if it's bad. Restart and the Mac will still be fine.

-S