I have two hard drives both Western Digital, one a 40 gb(the main drive) and the other a 30 gb(secondary drive). The 30 gb is about a two years or more older model, the 40 gb is about 1 yr old. My Windows xp is on the 40 and windows Me on the 30. Sometimes when I hook them together I have had problems like a dark blue screen in xp.(What I mean by hooked together is that the 30 is like extra space but is recognized in My Computer as another hard drive-like drive D)
I had copied the windows xp install disk files onto the 30 gb drive. I was trying to delete some files from the 30 gb drive(containing ME) and also trying to remove the windows xp files from that drive when my computer made a click and my Windows xp screen became a dark blue screen with the warning on it. I turned the computer off and restarted it and neither drive would come up. No drives were showing up in my bios. I turned off the computer and checked the connections(power and hd connections, unpluging them from the hard drives and reinserting them back as they were before.) I always keep my hand on metal to prevent static electricity. Both drives came up with the 40 gb still the main drive. When I tried to remove again the Windows XP install file from that 30 gb drive, the computer gave me a message that the files could not be removed. I checked the Windows xp install files and something had happened to the files like some of the names of the files became like "@#no*", nonsense names. Obviously the computer did not recognize certain files and would not delete them.
This has happened before to the 30 gb drive when I was using the main 40 gb drive with xp on it. That time I had to format the whole 30 db drive.
This happens only when this drive is hooked to the Windows XP 40 gb drive. Does anyone know what is going on? Is Windows xp incompatible with Windows Me drive? Or could this be another problem.
Oh one other thing. I attached the 30 gb drive alone(not hooked up to the other drive) to the computer and Windows Me came up. But when I tried to remove the Windows xp install files on that drive, the files moved to recycle, and it was hard to remove them. At one time the amournt of free space on that drive showed only 2+GB when in actuality there was over 17 gb free space on the drive!! After restarting that drive the drive show up over 17GB free space! Does anyone know what is happening?

Just to try to clarify & simplify; I wonder:

1) Is it your desire to have a dual boot set up with xp & me?
2) you wrote: "I had copied the windows xp install disk files onto the 30 gb drive."
~Why did you do that?
3) you wrote: "xp screen became a dark blue screen with the warning on it."
~What was the Warning?
4) Have you checked the Device Manager & Disc Management for any clues?
5) you wrote: "I tried to remove the Windows xp install files on that drive, the files moved to recycle, and it was hard to remove them."
~Why was it hard? What errors did you get? Were you able to remove them?
6) As to the temporary loss of the drives; you think that was directly related to the windows problem? Has that ever happened before?
7) Have you checked the Event Viewer? Please post any error messages exactly as
they appear.

I believe I found the problem and this is good information for everyone.

I found that "Clicked off", usually indicates a hardware failure. When that happens, my hd's FAT tables can/will get corrupted. I have to be careful when disconnecting and connecting the cables. It is possible that I could break solder points on the PC board of the drive and possibly damage the cable also. This would cause the intermittent problem that I was having, that is a hd is either "freezing" (on Windows ME directly) or the warning dark blue screen comes up on Windows XP. The dark blue screen states that the computer is backing up my memory and shutting down.


Someone at my old workplace suggested that I buy some sort of a "harness" so that I could interchange internal hard drives easily without actually having to plug and unplug the connections in the back of the hard drive. If anyone knows what he is talking about and it is rather inexpensive, please let me know. I am assuming that this device attaches to the back of the hd and it can remain there for the life of the hd.

Does anyone know where I can get such a "harness" or whatever it is called?

Merry Christmas,
Jim

from a quick search of hardware i find "harness" used interchangably with "ribbon cables".

with your 2 drives on one cable as master/ slave then you just need a "boot manager" to choose which to boot.

is this what you are looking for? sorry if i misunderstand. here is a search for XP/ ME dual boot set-ups:

xp me dual boot