Removing new faulty hard drive, then setting up the bootloader correctly again

[Azur746]

Hi, in my other thread (http://neosmart.net/forums/showthread.php?t=3864) that explains about me installing the seagate hard drive.. It is already showing symptoms of failure. It is performing worse than my existing samsung drive in health programs like activesmart and hdd health.
It has also clicked a few times when I accessed data on it and other times not.

Anyway I plan to replace it with another drive quick, and will need to shread it/then remove it.
Looking at my boot configuration (other thread) I am assuming that I can just remove that drive - the larger one (Disk 1) containing the partitions S and T and that it will not cause any problems with the other XP and Vista on the other drive (Disk 0) when booting becuase the vista bootloader should still pick them up.

When I put a new drive in - format it - then install xp - would the boot configuration go back to the settings that it is currently in?

"When Vista is back in charge you will have a 2 stage menu.
You select Vista or XP from the 1st menu (Vista's BCD), and if you choose XP, it will chain to NTLDR which will read boot.ini and give you a second menu to choose between the 2 XPs."

Or would I need to alter more settings to get the drives back into the above configuration?

If anyone can help me or suggest something that can help I would be very greatful.
thanks, Azur

 

[Azur746]

I plan to replace this hard drive with a new one that is not a Seagate, are samung a good manufacturer?

If somebody could suggest a good 1TB drive from this site I would be really happy , because I have no idea which hard drive manufacturers are good and which are bad - i think western digital are good though, but they are all out of stock.
This is only an option though if Scan will let me replace it for an alternative drive - and I think the odds are good because the one I have that failed is out of stock. I am calling them tomorrow.

thanks, Azur

 

[JustinW]

I've got a seagate I'm quite happy with. Hard drives fail all the time. It isn't necessarily the manufacturer. Choose whats in your price range. If you're unsure get the most expensive one available. The best order for re-installing is always oldest to newest, so if you get your hard drive and install XP first and Vista second on separate partitions the dual-boot should be automatically created for you without need for editing the boot loader.

 

[Azur746]

Thanks kairozamorro, I have arranged for the hard drive to be picked up on friday, so I am just going to shread all of the data on it now. I think that the vista bootloader should then just spot the previous xp and vista for a few days before I get another, then hopefully notice a new xp that I install. I think I might need to repair the vista bootloader again though because then NTDLR will take over the bootloader thing again I think.

I have been given the option for a refund, so I am going to buy a western digital one I think.

I have run all of the basic tests on the seatools program and it has passed them aswell as the smart test. The longer ones look like they will take all night or even longer, so I am not going to run those. I am sending it back based on the fact that it clicked about 4 times the other day while I was in another operating system on another drive.
Do you think that it could have just spun down slower because it wasn't being used, and then when it was called on for data the OS suddenly read it it clicked?

Thanks, Azur

 

[Terry60]

My 2 WD 500Gb SATA drives are very quiet, just spinning or read/writing.
The Maxtor 160Gb IDE drive that used to be the second drive, made more noise especially when the read/write heads did a seek.
There was nothing wrong with it though, it was just not as quiet.
I quite liked the seek noises at boot-up, I always used them as an audio guide to the boot progress, with a triple click letting me know the splash screen was gone and the boot menu was about to appear.
It quite confused me when the silent WD disk went in and I had no more audio progress reports at boot time. I missed a few boot menus (very short timeout) because of it, so I've actually upped the timeout value as a result.
The point being, that noises made by a HDD don't indicate an error. My IDE disk is years old, has been running in 2 different PC builds, has never given errors and is still going strong (now in a DTR). All that time it's been noisy (compared to the WD) but not in an absolute sense.
If you return your Seagate as faulty and their returns department runs the same tests you have (i.e. NO errors, NO faults), they might not be inclined to give you a full refund.
I don't know about where you come from, but British consumer law entitles you to a full refund if the goods are faulty, i.e. "not fit for purpose" or "not of merchantable quality", but hearing 4 clicks wouldn't qualify on either count.

 

[Coolname007]

I got a 1TB hard drive just recently, and so far it seems to be pretty good (it was only $130). It is a Iomega Ego Desktop Hard Drive. I also have a passport drive that is the same brand that is 250 GBs, and that one I've used for a while now, and like it.
Its relatively quiet, and has reasonably good speed of data transfer as well.