Replacing C Drive

[rward39571]

I knew replacing the C drive would probably put me over my head. i had an old C drive and lost data recently when it couldn't find its partition and asked for help from the recovery manager. I did it and bought a new C drive.

I reasoned that it might be OK to put the new disc in, format it with the recovery CDs that came with the computer to just get everything running, then update everything.

It stalled out after the first disc. I would up reattaching my old C drive to the computer, booted off of it, and tried to format the new disc. Now, because of the incomplete jumble of Windows 7 and other stuff (I guess), the new drive won't format. I am getting a Data Error: Cyclic Redundancy error.

Is there any way to fix this thing?

[Paul_Tikkanen]

Hi:

I suggest that since you want to reinstall W10, that you use the media creation tool at the link below to make a bootable USB W10 installation flash drive, using another Windows PC.

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows10

When you get to the screen that asks 'Where do you want to install Windows,' delete every partition on the hard drive, leaving just one partition of unallocated space.   Click Next, and W10 should install.

If you are asked to enter a product key during the installation process, select the 'I don't have a product key' option, and W10 will install and automatically activate once you are connected to the internet.

[rward39571]

Thanks. The only problem is that the computer doesn't acknowledge the new drive as one of the drives in "My PC." It does see it in disk manager as unformatted, but when I try to format it I first for "disc not ready" and then the Cyclic Redundancy error. I will try what you suggest, but I am afraid that  even after that it won't let me do anything with the new drive.

Anyway, I'll try it and see what happens.

[Paul_Tikkanen]

You're very welcome.

As long as you can boot from the W10 installation USB flash drive and it sees the hard drive, you should be able to fix the problem and get W10 installed.

You don't need to be in Windows to do this.  Actually, you can't be in Windows to do this.

[rward39571]

So I tried and when I selected the new drive in windows setup I got: Windows cannot be installed on this disk. This computer's hardware may not support booting to this disk. Ensure that the disk's controller is enabled in the computer's BIOS menu.

The new drive is a 1 Tb 7500RPM WD drive, same specs as the Hitachi I am replacing.

[Paul_Tikkanen]

See if you can use the diskpart utility to clean the disk and try again.

Watch this video.  You have a different error, but the process to clean the disk is the same.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=z4Z38pD1Gt0&feature=emb_logo

[rward39571]

Thanks again. I tried it, went all the way through "clean." It said the disk was clean. Same result when I tried to load windows onto the new drive.

At this point I think I may as well just put the old C drive back in and start shopping for a new PC. This one is over 8 years old.

[rward39571]

Here are some of the log entries I have gotten. Should I assume after all this sweat and hassle that my new drive is bad?

The device is not ready. VDS fails to write boot code on a disk during clean operation. Error code: 80070015@02070008 . The IO operation at logical block address 0x0 for Disk 1 (PDO name: \Device\00000027) was retried. The start type of the Background Intelligent Transfer Service service was changed from auto start to demand start. The device, \Device\Harddisk1\DR1, has a bad block.

[Paul_Tikkanen · Accepted solution]

Yes.

I would agree that you would be correct with that assumption.

You should be able to exchange it for a replacement.