ascoredhat

... I'm a stupid kind of guy, so it only seems appropriate.

I've been working for a week to try to solve an issue of getting my old hard drive to work with my new MB and CPU, and where it stands now is when I boot it says Invalid System Disk. When I check out the CMOS, under primary IDE drive it says "not detected". After checking the obvious (are cables plugged in properly and firmly attach? Power cable connected? etc), I'm wondering if I have my jumpers set right. The reason I'm wondering is I currently have 1 Hard drive and 1 DVD-Rom drive on the primary cable (the stupid motherboard doesn't have secondary IDE connector), and I have the Hard drive set up as Master and the DVD-Rom set up as slave, as I figured that's the way it's supposed to be. However, it seems odd to me because I therefore have to have the hard drive on the end of the IDE cable with the slave drive, the DVD-rom drive, on the middle connector, and that makes it a very, very awkward connection inside the computer. Since the HD bay is below the DVD-rom bay, I have to twist it pretty funny to make the connections reach. Logic seems to tell me that the HD should be off the middle connector and then the end connector will reach effortlessly to the DVD-rom drive. If so, do I make the DVD-Rom drive the master and the HD the slave? Do I make the both Cable select? One of them cable select? I never really learned what the heck cable select even means, to be honest.

Perhaps this is why the HD is not being detected at boot up. I know the HD works as when I put it in another computer as a slave, it pops right up in My Computer, so it's being seen.

Any advice on the proper way to hook up the HD and DVD-rom to the cable and what jumper settings to use for each would be appreciated. Also, if it means anything, I have the DVD-Rom drive set up as the first boot device and the HD as second.

Thanks :)

Deleted090308

Hi,

Set them both to cable select.

ascoredhat

Thanks for replying, eneles. :)

So, if I set them both to cable select, can I therefore hook the middle connector to the hard drive and hook the DVD-Rom drive to the end connector (thus not having to stretch and twist the cable)?

And how would the CMOS be dealt with? Does it automatically assign one or the other as Primary Master/Primary Slave? Or do I have to go into setup and designate them myself?

I'm sure this is basic stuff, but it's all Greek to me. lol

I appreciate your help.

Deleted090308

Cable select will tell BIOS to make the "middle" drive slave and the drive at the end of the cable master.
Both drives must be set to cable select.
Make sure the IDE channel is set to Auto in BIOS.

ascoredhat

That did the trick. Finally everything booted up, the hard drive was detected, and now Windows 2000 is in the process of setting up on the hard drive.

Thank you so much, eneles, for your wonderful assistance. :)

Deleted090308

I'm glad you got it fixed.