I don't understand why not I can plug my old HD in and run partition magic and format it. I can put files onto the HD so i know it's hooked up right and everything. I did the whole win98 boot disk it didnt seem to do anything. Partition magic shows it to be of active status.
But as soon as I unplug the old HD and I start up my machine I dont even get the boot from cd option sometimes. and when i do it tells me I have no HD.