HDD's are broken up into partitions. Every HDD has a partition that is set to be the default boot partition.
Your error message tends to indicate that the HDD is does not have a default boot partition. This is commonly set through the FDISK program from DOS or LINUX - Although there are often others.
The only times I have seen similar errors is when I attempt to make a partition on a secondary drive active or default.
I do not think this should make any difference, but are you plugged into the primary HDD controller. Also, is your HDD set up as a MASTER?