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18116
July 4th, 2014 13:00
boot from secondary drive after primary failed
I have a Dell XPS 8500 desktop 1.5 yrs old. Already, the motherboard had to be replaced. and now the primary internal hard drive has apparently failed - according to the dell diagnostics. When I first got the computer, I installed a secondary hard drive and set up a periodic back up... hopefully, thats been running all along. My question is, whats the best way to recover? I can't boot from the secondary drive... I guess there's no SYS files there and no Windows 7 installed there. The only disk I can find from dell for this computer is the Dell Drivers and Utilities disk. I don't recall ever getting a Windows 7 install disk. Can this be downloaded from dell?
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osprey4
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July 4th, 2014 13:00
Hi Ajbuch,
The best way to recover the system is to install a new hard drive onto which you can install Windows 7. You can't install Windows 7 onto the second drive since you already have files on it. I've got a link below to a nice operating system installation guide that includes instructions for preparing a Windows 7 installation disc from a downloadable file (or flash drive if you prefer).
Since your 8500 is fairly new, you might consider a solid state drive, which would give you a nice performance boost.
ajbuch
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July 5th, 2014 07:00
Thanks for the reply! That link looks to be a big help, although I have yet to go out and buy a new drive...
I see that you have links to Windows 7 iso.... not sure what Iso is, but I assume that is the Win7 installation I need. Do I download it, burn it on to dvd and then load the dvd into the 8500 and install from there (once I put in a new drive)?
Thanks for your help!!
osprey4
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July 8th, 2014 17:00
An ISO is an image of a CD or DVD disc and can be used by your burning program to create the disc. For Windows 7, you can use either a blank DVD or flash drive.