darkmana

I have a Seagate 160 GB IDE hard drive I purchased several months ago, which I took out of one computer to put into my newer one. I only have one cable open for a hard drive, so I'm booting to my DVD drive to install Windows onto it.

Problem is, with the newer hard drive in the computer, it will not boot from the DVD drive. It says it is incompatible. I've been using it for years without trouble, but now -- only with the new hard drive connected -- does it give me this.

I've already tried swapping out the DVD drive, but with no success. It works fine if I switch back to the older hard drive.

Done_Fishin

have you double checked the pin configuration on the back of the HDD & DVD at all .. one (HDD) should be Master the other slave (DVD) ..
you should see some pins with markings MS, SL, CS on both drives .. make sure they are configured properly ..

darkmana

Yes, the HDD is set to primary master and the DVD drive is set to primary slave.

Done_Fishin

Check with Dell to see if there's a BIOS update ..

If I understand correctly .. the DVD has been working well for some time and a replacement DVD does the same ..

What size is your OLD hard drive ..

There is a slim chance that this might be power supply related .. I note that you only have a 305W power supply .. I have seen mobo's work great in all respects except that the FLOPPY wouldn't work which turned out to be PSU .. but it's along shot .. more likely a BIOS problem due to exceeding 137GB..

darkmana

The computer isn't a Dell, it was built custom. It has an ASUS mainboard.
The old hard drive is 60 GB.

Just for now I've taken out the DVD drive to hook up both HDDs, and I'm currently formatting the newer one.

NOTE: Just for future reference, the computer listed in My System isn't the same one I'm working with.

Done_Fishin

Now you tell me

then maybe you should check with Asus about a possible BIOS upgrade .. since there is an incompatibility .. it's possible that the BIOS isn't LBA48 compatible and will limit the disk size to 137GB

darkmana

I'll try once more with the new drive (after formatting) and if the problem persists, I'll do just that.
Thanks.

darkmana

Well then. I did have the jumper wrong -- it was in upside down.

Thanks for the help, much appreciated.

Done_Fishin

That doesn't compute .. ( sorry about the play on words ) those jumpers are just shorting links .. so unless you meant that you had a link in the wrong place because the mfrs don't id the pins properly anymore .. I don't understand ..

darkmana

Instead of being like this:

1 0 0 0
1 0 0 0

It was like this:

0 0 0 1
0 0 0 1

Because I was looking at it upside-down when I put the jumper in.

Done_Fishin

many years ago the HDD manufacturers wrote MS SL & CS on teh boards by the pins so the tech could understand what pins the jumpers should go on .. they seem to have changed all that and have added extra pins too .. which means we all get very confused trying to realise what the diagrams on the drives mean in relation to the physical pins ..which is why I asked if you had double checked the configuration .. only yesterday I found that one of our techs had put two drives together one in slave and the other in cable select .. which is also a no no ..
Glad you sorted it out, come again if you get any more problems .