New Hard drive for M8330f

[myfirecomputer]

I have a new Seagate 2TB hard drive for my m8330f deskstop.  I installed the recovery CDs that I purchased from HP.  Now it stalls at bootup. 

Do I need to set the bios? 

Should I boot on Cd then SATA hard drive group?

Should it be set for the controller at SATA 1 or SATA 1+2,not sure what that means.

Thanks for your help.

[Hanspuppa]

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myfirecomputer wrote: I have a new Seagate 2TB hard drive for my m8330f deskstop.  I installed the recovery CDs that I purchased from HP.  Now it stalls at bootup. Do I need to set the bios?  Should I boot on Cd then SATA hard drive group?

Should it be set for the controller at SATA 1 or SATA 1+2,not sure what that means.Thanks for your help.

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Hello myfirecomputer, Sometimes a new hard drive will need to be prepared before it can be used. This just means creating a partition and formatting the drive. There are times this needs to be done on some HP systems before the Recovery Disk will be recognized. This may not be the case for you however, since you mentioned you installed the Recovery CDs (DVDs).

I would take a look at the BIOS settings and make sure they are set up properly. HP systems like for the primary hard drive be connected to Sata port0, but I have used other ports and it worked well for me.

The boot sequence should be set for the CD\DVD group as the first boot device and the Sata hard drive (2 TB) as the second boot device.

If the system will not boot after these settings changes, you may need to insert the HP Recovery Restore Disk 1 in the optical drive and boot the system and see if the system will reinstall the Recovery software.

[myfirecomputer]

Thank you for your reply.  It seems like the recovery installs but when I reboot, I get a black screen with flashing cursor. Should I use the SATA 0 as the hard drive, that is what it is on now with DVD on SATA1

[Hanspuppa]

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myfirecomputer wrote: Thank you for your reply.  It seems like the recovery installs but when I reboot, I get a black screen with flashing cursor. Should I use the SATA 0 as the hard drive, that is what it is on now with DVD on SATA1

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Hello myfirecomputer, I'm sorry, I should have said Sata port0 as the port where the hard drive should be connected.

You may need to enter the BIOS and in the hard drive group, make sure the 2 TB hard drive is listed as the first in the hard drive group.

The blinking cursor simply means the system is booting and has passed the POST (Pre Operating System Test) and is trying to turn control of the system over to the operating system, but cannot. It may be as simple as making the proper settings in the BIOS.

Please keep me updated.

[myfirecomputer]

I installed the 2TB seagate on SATA0, booting on the CD installing onto the drive.  I rebooted the system, it still hangs.  I removed the drive and I used a USB/SATA adapter to see if I can see files in the drive, yes, the files are installed. 

[Hanspuppa]

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myfirecomputer wrote: I installed the 2TB seagate on SATA0, booting on the CD installing onto the drive.  I rebooted the system, it still hangs.  I removed the drive and I used a USB/SATA adapter to see if I can see files in the drive, yes, the files are installed. 

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Hello myfirecomputer, Do you still have the original hard drive that you replaced with the 2 TB hard drive. If so, you might try reinstalling it and see if the system will boot from the original drive.

It is possible the Master Boot Record could be corrupted on the 2 TB drive. If you had an original Windows 7 DVD you could repair the Master Boot Record just by booting to the Windows 7 DVD and select to repair a boot error.

Just something else to try.

[myfirecomputer]

I bought this M8330f used. The hard drive that is came with was one 360GB with Windows 7 loaded.  I wanted to restore it to the original Vista with whatever teh HP software that came with it.  Maybe that is my mistake.  I bought the original CD recovery disks and two 2TB hard drives, one to be used as a storage drive.  I tried to install the recovery onto a second drive with same results.  On the recovery instructions, it tells me to remove recovery disk and reboot as the rebooting may take as long as two hours, well, I left it for 9 hours, still left with only a cursor. Could it be that I have bad recovery disks? Maybe it not worth it with the Vista and whatever software I missed and to go onto Windows 7.

[Hanspuppa]

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myfirecomputer wrote: I bought this M8330f used. The hard drive that is came with was one 360GB with Windows 7 loaded.  I wanted to restore it to the original Vista with whatever teh HP software that came with it.  Maybe that is my mistake.  I bought the original CD recovery disks and two 2TB hard drives, one to be used as a storage drive.  I tried to install the recovery onto a second drive with same results.  On the recovery instructions, it tells me to remove recovery disk and reboot as the rebooting may take as long as two hours, well, I left it for 9 hours, still left with only a cursor. Could it be that I have bad recovery disks? Maybe it not worth it with the Vista and whatever software I missed and to go onto Windows 7.

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Hello myfirecomputer, It appears there may be some other issues going on here. I checked the specifications for the M8330f system that can be found  Here.

It shows this system was shipped with two 320 GB hard drives configured in a Raid0 array for a total of 640 GBs of capacity. This is the unformatted capacity so the useable capacity would be somewhat less due to formatting and the HP Recovery Restore partition.

Since you mentioned you purchased the system used, and did not mention but only one hard drive, the original owner may have removed one of the 320 GB hard drives. If this was done, the Raid0 array would have been broken and all the data on the remaining hard drive would have been lost (erased).

Since you ordered the HP Recovery Restore disk set for this system, it would have been for the original set with the Raid0 array. These HP Recovery Restore Disk set would be useless except for the original hard drives setup in the Raid0 array.

I now can understand why you have not been successful in your efforts to get the HP Recovery Restore disk set to work properly.

Your only option at this point would be either, to purchase two of the 320 GB hard drives, set them up in a Raid0 array and use the HP Recovery Restore disk set to reinstall the software, or install the two 2 TB hard drives and purchase a retail version of either Windows Vista or Windows 7. The system shipped with Windows Vista x86 (32 bit).

You would not need to set the 2 TB hard drives in a Raid0 array, but use one as the primary hard drive and the other as a backup hard drive. I would go with Windosw 7, since it is more stable and a newer version, and Vista will soon be unsupported by Microsoft before too long.

If you purchase a retail version of Windows 7, you would get both the Windows 7 x86 (32 bit) and the Windows 7 x64 (64 bit) version on two DVDs. I normally suggest using the Windows 7 x64 version but others may disagree. There is a slight performance increase with Windows 7 x64. You would need at least 4 GBs of memory for best performance with Windows 7 x64.

The specifications show the system was shipped with 3 GBs of memory, but I would want to verify that, since the system was purchased used and you really don't know if any of the memory was removed. Windows 7 x64 will run on 3 GBs of memory but much better with 4 or more GBs of memory. This system supports up to a total of 8 GBs of memory.

This is a lot on your plate to try and digest, but just let me know how you want to proceed, and maybe I can offer some suggestions that will work, now that I know much of what has been going on.

[myfirecomputer]

Thank you.  I forgot to mention that with one hard drive on SATA0, I was able to install Windows 7 using a single drive and the computer will work.  I wish is to use the second drive as data storage so it sounds like I am better off with Win7 and throwing away the recovery disks since it will not work with the secondary drive as storage. 

I do have two 2Tb in which I can try the recovery to see if I like it, but you said Win7 would be better to use?

If I do use two 2TB drives, one drive would be SATA0, where do I connect the second drive? SATA2? DVD on SATA1? I would I disable the raid function?  Do I need to connect the drives differently with and with raid?

[Hanspuppa]

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myfirecomputer wrote: Thank you.  I forgot to mention that with one hard drive on SATA0, I was able to install Windows 7 using a single drive and the computer will work.  I wish is to use the second drive as data storage so it sounds like I am better off with Win7 and throwing away the recovery disks since it will not work with the secondary drive as storage.  I do have two 2Tb in which I can try the recovery to see if I like it, but you said Win7 would be better to use? If I do use two 2TB drives, one drive would be SATA0, where do I connect the second drive? SATA2? DVD on SATA1? I would I disable the raid function?  Do I need to connect the drives differently with and with raid?

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Hello myfirecomputer, Great to hear you managed to get Windows 7 installed on a single drive. You should be able to install a second 2 TB hard drive in the case and use it as an internal backup drive. You would need to locate where a second hard drive can be mounted in the case. You also would need to partition and format the drive before it can be used, if not already. You may need to share the drives in order to copy files to them as well.

The HP Recovery Restore Disk set will not work on any other system except the one that you purchased them for, so essentially they are of no use to you. They will not install on the 2 TB hard drive.

The second hard drive should work on any of the unused Sata ports. You  can connect it to the Sata 2 port since the Sata 1 port is being used by the DVD drive, or you could reconnect the DVD drive to Sata 2 and connect the 2 TB drive to the Sata 1 port. This approach would keep the Sata hard drive on Sata port 0 and Sata port1 and the DVD drive on Sata port2.

Here  is a link that shows how to install a hard drive in your system. It may not be exactly shown as your system, since HP sometimes uses generic photos for many different systems. You may already know how to do this as well.

This really makes no difference since the new drive should work just fine on Sata port 2. I just like to keep up with where my hard drives are connected and by putting them on Sata Port 0 and Sata port 1, it's easier for me to remember where they are. You must remember you are dealing with a memory challenged old dude here.....