Uh oh...error loading os, forced LBA returns disk read error

[soccerballtux]

Oh dear...I was in the process of installing Gentoo, then realized after doing hdparm that my 60 gig wd HDD is about 15MB/s faster at some sort of reading (the second output of hdparm -tT), and that I would want to put my root filesystems on that drive and use my other 160GB wd hdd as my storage for xp and /home.

My current xp installation is on my 160gb hdd, but that did seem slower (must be cause its a "special edition"), so I started the xp install, copying all files to the hdd, and then when it rebooted, I got "Error Loading Operating System." While searching for help, I read in another forum that this one guy's hdd was being detected as CHD and he was getting this error, and all he had to do was force LBA mode on it. I did that (under my bios...wasn't exactly forcing just changing from CHD to LBA) but now whenever I try to boot from it, I get "disk read error. Press Ctrl + Alt + Delete to reboot." What should I do?

A few notes. This used to be my main hdd. I had XP on it as well as Mandrake 10.0 with the Mandrake boot thingy. When I put in and installed windows on my new 160g hard drive, I deleted the C directory and all the other files (including the system files since I've got those viewable in Explorer) and just kept that hdd as a backup for the cases where I want to reinstall, such as now.

Since this is the faster drive, I really want to put my Windows and Gentoo roots on this so that bootup will be faster....but I don't have any idea how to fix it.

Oh and one last thing....when installing, the gentoo x86 handbook said that hdparm -d 1 -A 1 -m 16 -u 1 -a 64 /dev/hda was a safe performance enhancer. I did that to both my /dev/hda as well as /dev/hdb (and accidentally /dev/hda1 too I think). Could this have screwed it up?

Anyone know what to do and feels kind enough to share? Thanks in advance.
_________________
...Linux will rule M$...one day...
->Music washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life.
“...a typical program the size of Linux would have 5,000 or more defects. Linux 2.6 kernel which is 5.7 million lines of code only has about 985 bugs in it.”

[soccerballtux]

bump....help......
_________________
...Linux will rule M$...one day...
->Music washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life.
“...a typical program the size of Linux would have 5,000 or more defects. Linux 2.6 kernel which is 5.7 million lines of code only has about 985 bugs in it.”

[soccerballtux]

OK well I managed to get windows xp up and running on it...I don't know what it was. I had tried copying the files over again, all to no avail. I then booted into my other xp installation, did a format of the drive I was having the problems in, and then tried installing xp again, and it worked. Go figure. So just keep trying I guess for any other people who have this problem.....computers are weird.....
_________________
...Linux will rule M$...one day...
->Music washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life.
“...a typical program the size of Linux would have 5,000 or more defects. Linux 2.6 kernel which is 5.7 million lines of code only has about 985 bugs in it.”