Hard disk is not readable

Chances are it was formatted as NTFS format by the PC which is not MAC compatible. You will need to reformat the drive in HFS format if you want it to work as a MAC disk only or in FAT32 format if you want to read it in PC and MAC machines.

Try to get Acronis Disk Director. This program is able to read and format your harddisk, even when Windows is not able to see it (*). With the mentioned software, you can format the disk and make it readable for Windows.

(*) Maybe it's not formatted, or contains a file-format which Windows does not recognise, like what happened, when this disk was previously formatted for UNIX/Linux-systems. With Acronis you can overcome this problem.

This error comes out when the pc cannot find the hard disk.
Does the bios detect it? What is the exact error?
If the error you get is NTLDR missing you should install again the operating system (i.e. Windows)
If the error you get is no bootable device can be an hardware problem. Please check the connection of your hard disk. If connection is good you may want to remove the hard disk and buy a new one. The old hard disk you can put into a usb drive and copy your personal data so you can have it back.
If with the new hard disk you are not successful it could be a motherboard problem and you should take it to assistance

Hi. Sounds like a problem with the harddrive boot block. Try the torubleshooting steps i provided to you below. If same issue appears after thes troubleshooting then theres a need to replace your Harddrive.

* If you have a floppy try to boot with bootdisk http://www.bootdisk.com/
if you have a bootable windows CD - try booting that then go to the repair console.

have a good one!

If you need further help, reach me via phone at https://www.6ya.com/expert/elixirjose_00375ea24bd8141b

to answer the first question an Iso file can be burned to disk using the iso
burning function that comes with most burning software. if this file is an operating system then it would automatically be burned as a boot disk and nothing else would be needed. However if this is say service pack 3 and its an iso format then even though your burning it using an iso function it would just be service pack 3 and nothing else a none boo table disk.

Fat32 simply means that your hard drive can only read files up to 4GB, format your external harddrive using file system NTFS then try to back up all your files again. Hope it helps you...

You need to use a Windows install disk, or the computer recovery disk.

At startup of new windows installation, chose new installation and then chose the option Format hard drive.

Note: the windows install disk must be bootable, Upgrade install disk (non bootable) does not have the format option.

Regards

You have half a dozen reasons why this will not work. The Operating system (XP) does not recognise the different hardware, the Bios doesn't recognise the MBR (the file structure of the harddrive) and you have all the wrong hardware drivers installed.
There is a way to do this if you have the original XP installation disk, install the harddrive, put the XP installation disk in the CD/DVD drive and set the machine to boot from the CD/DVD first. When the machine boots up and goes to install XP follow the instructions as if you are doing a fresh install, when SetUp attempts to format the harddrive it will discover you already have a version of XP installed and will give you the option to repair it, go ahead with the repair and MAYBE SetUp will be able to see and install the correct hardware drivers. If not you are looking at Slaving the harddrive, saving your personal files and then formatting the harddrive and reinstalling XP fresh.

It looks like you may have a boot sector virus. A boot sector virus is one that infects the first sector, i.e. the boot sector, of a floppy disk or hard drive. Boot sector viruses can also infect the MBR. All disks and hard drives are divided into small sectors. The first sector is called the boot sector and contains the Master Boot Record (MBR). The MBR contains the information concerning the location of partitions on the drive and reading of the bootable operating system partition.

When disinfecting a boot sector virus, the system should always be booted from a known clean system disk. On a DOS-based PC, a bootable system disk can be created on a clean system running the exact same version of DOS as the infected PC. From a DOS prompt, type:

SYS C:\ A:\

and press enter. This will copy the system files from the local hard drive (C:\) to the floppy drive (A:\).
If the disk has not been formatted, the use of FORMAT /S will format the disk and transfer the necessary system files. On Windows 3.1x systems, the disk should be created as described above for DOS-based PC's. On Windows 95/98/NT systems, click Start | Settings | Control Panel | Add/Remove Programs and choose the Startup Disk tab. Then click on "Create Disk". Windows 2000 users should insert the Windows 2000 CD-ROM into the CD-ROM drive, click Start | Run and type the name of the drive followed by bootdisk\makeboot a: and then click OK. For example:

d:\bootdisk\makeboot a:

Follow the screen prompts to finish creating the bootable system disk. In all cases, after the creation of the bootable system disk, the disk should be write protected to avoid infection.

Once the OS loads, run your anti-virus software and it should clean the virus.

Should this not help, I'm afraid the only other alternative would be to reformat the HDD and reinstall XP again from a bootable disc.

Hope that helps..

Assuming you set it as slave or cable select as required by the motherboard, you have to first get the bios to recognise it press F2 or Del on boot up to enter cmos and then there should be an option to auto detect drives, save settings for a re boot. When in windows, right click on my computer icon and select manage>disk management and then your drives will be listed, right click on the slave drive and select format or set as active and it will then show, but only 137GB may show depending on the bios version.