I want to add another hard drive, but it won't work?

Question

I tried to put the drive in, and it automatically booted from it instead of the old one. The new one is messed up (the operating system) and it brings up a recovery thing. Then when the recovery thing finishes, it turns the computer off. What can I do to format this disk without having to
1) pay money
2) mail it off
3) waste my time

Answer 1

The BIOS will usually only let you select hard drive or optical drive - it won't let you choose which hard drive to boot from.

The problem is that both drives probably have a system partion on them and it is finding your "new" drive first.

I would disconnect the "new" drive and make sure that your computer can still boot from it. Then turn the computer off, reconnect the "new" drive, start up, change the BIOS to boot from CD and insert a Windows boot disk, then use this disk to delete the system partition. BE CAREFUL that you don't delete anything off of your "old" drive - use the hard drive size to determine which is the old one and only delete the system partition and re-format that drive.

Answer 2

Go into the bios, check the boot order. Set the original disk as first boot. I hope you did not move the original disk to another connector or change it's jumper settings, this will prevent it from running correctly.

Answer 3

Boot up with floppy or CD and when you get to drive a:\ type the followings
a:\ format c:/s press enter and follow to the end of format.