major disk problem "boot failure"

[hunter_christy]

okay.

i have two hard drives.
one is a 200gb seagate partioned into an 80g and 120gb. this drive runs windows, etc.

the second is a 400gb seagate partioned in half.

i restarted my computer, and it said "boot failure. insert system disk and press enter"

tried that. no dice. on a whim, i removed my 400gb, and the computer booted up fine.

thusly, the 400gb is the problem. but short of data recovery, how do i fix it?!

please help.

[Enverex]

It's trying to boot from the wrong drive. Go into the BIOS and look for 'Boot Order' or 'Boot Priority' or something like that and change it so that the 200GB drive is on the top (or at least above the 400GB drive) and it should be fine.

[hunter_christy]

i tried to put this hard drive in another machine, and it did the same thing.

i checked my jumpers, and those appear correct.

i even tried to put the drive in my external casing.

i will try the BIOS.

then i guess i will try a data recovery place.

[Enverex]

Data Recovery wont help you at all as there is nothing to recover. Everything is still there and completely intact, your machine is just configured wrong.

[hunter_christy]

but if my machine was just configured wrong, why would it do the same thing in another machine?

also, why would this happen out of nowhere?

i am not challenging you. i appreciate your taking the time to respond. i am just confused, frustrated, sad, a little tired, and dumb.

[hunter_christy]

okay. now i'm getting

Primary master drive fails
Primary slave drive fails

[Enverex]

It sounds like both drives are now configured to be slave or master. Change the jumpers on the drives to "Cable Select" mode (how to do it should be marked on the drive somewhere, you do it by changing the little jumper on the pins on the back).

Do you have both drives on the same IDE cable or a different one?