[cording12]

Hi all,

I'm running a Dell Optiplex GX620 and have just upgraded the RAM. I bought a 750GB hard drive (Western Digital - WD7500AARX) and installed it into the PC. I turn the PC on and try to boot win7 from my USB device and I just get the message:

Error Auto-Sensing Secondary Master Hard Disk Drive!

What does this mean? As far as I know that's the only drive installed! I am completely replacing the 40GB one that the PC came with.

I entered BIOS and it detecs the fact that it is a SATA drive with 64MB cache but it reads the capacity as 'unknown'.

Urgent help needed here guys and all help is of course immensly appreciated!

Thanks

JC

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Hi cording12 and

I'm running a Dell Optiplex GX620 and have just upgraded the RAM

How much Ram do you have fitted?

I bought a 750GB hard drive (Western Digital - WD7500AARX) and installed it into the PC. I turn the PC on and try to boot win7 from my USB device

Please clarify what you mean, is the new HDD blank and you have an external USB HDD with W7 on it that you are trying to boot from!
Things that you need to be aware of include there may not be any W7 drivers available for the Dell GX620 see the attached link http://support.dell....temID=PLX_GX620 and the other point to note is that the new HDD must be formatted and partitioned before use http://windows.micro...-disk-partition so that drive letters can be allocated and so that they can be identified and read.

[phillpower2]

Hi cording12 and

I'm running a Dell Optiplex GX620 and have just upgraded the RAM

How much Ram do you have fitted?

I bought a 750GB hard drive (Western Digital - WD7500AARX) and installed it into the PC. I turn the PC on and try to boot win7 from my USB device

Please clarify what you mean, is the new HDD blank and you have an external USB HDD with W7 on it that you are trying to boot from!
Things that you need to be aware of include there may not be any W7 drivers available for the Dell GX620 see the attached link http://support.dell....temID=PLX_GX620 and the other point to note is that the new HDD must be formatted and partitioned before use http://windows.micro...-disk-partition so that drive letters can be allocated and so that they can be identified and read.

[cording12]

Hi there,

Thanks for the reply! I upgraded the PC to 4GB of RAM and the new HDD I am installing is completely blank. I am trying to install windows 7 onto it from the bootable USB stick but I end up with said error!

I can't format/partition the hard drive because it's completely blank and needs an operating system on it to do so

What I'm going to try doing is taking it to my home PC (this is a my uni PC) and then installing it in that, if it works then it's this PC and if it doesn't I assume that the HDD was damaged in delivery because two of the metal corners on it seem to be bent down hmm

Thanks!

[phillpower2]

Hi cording12 and thanks for added details.

I can't format/partition the hard drive because it's completely blank and needs an operating system on it to do so

Sorry but this is incorrect, if the HDD did have an OS on it and you then formatted and partitioned it you would then effectively have two blank HDDs, the C: (main drive) and the partition which could be allocated the drive letter K: for example.
A new HDD is normally formatted and partitioned in the following way;

1: The boot sequence on the PC is changed in the BIOS to 1: CD/DVD drive and 2: The HDD.
2: The OS disk is placed in the drive tray and the PC is rebooted.
3: A message is displayed on screen saying "Press any key to boot from CD/disk".
4: You then follow the options on screen to format and partition the HDD.

The only difference with what you are attempting is that the boot order must be 1: USB device and 2: HDD.
Whilst in fact the HDD may be damaged I feel that once you change the method that you were using you will be successful, however there may be other issues that prevent you achieving the task at all and two that come to mind straight away are 1: Can the GX620 BIOS be set to boot from a USB device and 2: Where did the OS on the USB device come from, is it the full OS and in fact is it legitimate!

http://www.hiren.inf...bios-boot-cdrom scroll down to item 6 and it explains how to set the Dell BIOS, I am not suggesting that you use any other product or service that may be available there.