Question : Problem: Seagate 120gb hard drive

Hi all

I am in the process of building a new PC but when I try to boot from my XP CD it doesnt recognise it in the disk drive. The drive is set to boot first but it is as though the disk is not bootable.

I installed a copy of server 2003 to try and gain access to the disk which worked as I was hoping to install XP that way but on the menu "Install Windows XP" is disabled so I cannot click it. I have since tried the disk on another machine and it works fine.

My question is, I have installed and formatted the hard drive as NTFS but not partitioned it. Do I need to partition it and if so what size partitions please? Is this also likely to be why XP doesnt want to install?

Any help appreciated,

Thanks in advance

Answer : Problem: Seagate 120gb hard drive

Not sure if this will help you:
1) Separate?
There's no need for more partitions. XP has no problems at all. I had XP installed on a 120GB (1 HDD) single part. with a 400GB RAID array(4 HDDs behaving as a single disk). ASUS MB. No prob there... and on numerous other installations w/single-partitioned high-capacity drives.

2) "No boot device..."
If you have the option to throw away all data on your Seagate120, try a new clean installation. Boot form XP CD. When choosing target, Delete all partitions and Create one big (primary) partition and select it for installation. Quick Format and NTFS shall be enough. After restart, if the problem persists here are some suggestions.

a] check your cables;) if you have a RAID MB. Don't confuse RAID from standard UATA/SATA - there may be a different port for each one of them. Boot drive should be connected to the non-RAID. port.

b] check your pins (ran myself into this one lately):
  The HDD may be pinned wrong. Make sure it is found by the BIOS immediately after startup(=if the BIOS has no problems finding it autom. within few secs). I had an HDD pinned as a Master and I overlooked a different pinning for Single(single drive on cable). It kept being found in a weird way - XP Install found a drive and installed and then HDD failed to boot(wasn't found).

c] something is corrupted/faulty:
You said it worked elsewhere - tried BOOTING from it on a different PC?
If it worked elsewhere, there is most likely NOT a problem w/HDD.