Emergency, : formatting SATA hard drive

[SynapticSelf]

I have a SATA hard drive that I need to format, but the only person I know with a SATA system is my boss...so when he left today, I opened his computer. He has two SATA hard drives, and I unplugged one and connected mine. It didn't recognize the new disk, and plugged his back in. Although I have entered BIOS, I made no changes...but now I get BOOT DISK FAILURE, INSERT SYSTEM DISK AND PRESS ENTER...all of the plugs are exactly as they were before the "intrusion" (I did have his permission, so long as everything worked in the morning.) If I don't get this figured out now, I may be fired. Ok, I will be fired. Please help!

 

[SynapticSelf]

Never, mind...I fixed it. I'm wiping sweat from my brow as I type this, but I think my job is secure...but that still leaves the question: why wasn't my SATA drive recognized by his system. The settings in BIOS seemed to imply that the computer was expecting a 160 gig hard drive - the one I disconnected. Mine is a 120 gig. I think I'll have to study a little bit before I attempt this again.

 

[verty]

Sounds like you were really worried there. Did you perhaps unplug his boot drive? Did you need to select which drive would be the boot drive after you swapped the drives?