I swapped out a drive in a Dell Laptop, then attempted to
re-install the original (to retrieve data). I'm
getting "Primary Hard Drive 0 not found". Any suggestions?
Sounds like you just added the old drive - plugged it into the controller
cable, IOW. That's what you did, right? If so:
There are several issues:
a) Drive designations: the Master on the primary channel is Drive 0; the
Slave on the primary channel is Drive 1. This is a BIOS/Boot issue, and you
can't do a thing about it - but W2K expects to boot from whatever drive (0 or
1) that it was originally installed on.
b) The reinstalled old drive should be jumpered to Slave (don't use Cable
Select - it often does not work as it should). The old drive will now be
Drive 1.
c) However, the old drive presumably still has the original W2K installation
on it. You have inadvertently done an "upgrade to new hardware" on this
installation bec. This drive is no longer Drive 0. That upgrade can't be done
without preparation.
IMO, you will have to wipe the new drive (IMO this is best done by booting
from the floppy and using FDisk to destroy all partitions on this drive.) You
will then have to do a Move / Migrate to New Hardware to transfer W2K etc
from the old drive to the new drive. Search support.microsoft.com for the
article on this subject.
An alternative solution is to keep the old drive as is, install the new drive
as Slave, and use it solely as a data and back-up drive. If your current
installation of W2K is working fine, there's no need to move it to a newer
drive. If all you need is more space for data, adding a new drive is usually
a better solution in the long run. There's no need to have W2K, all
applications, and all data to reside all together on a single drive. In fact,
it's a Very Bad Idea, for a variety of reasons, which MS for some reason
doesn't want to admit.
HTH&GL
