Not Detecting Hard Drive?

Zethioth · 08-03-2009, 04:51 PM

So here's the issue.

My Hard Drive is small and since i'm only 14 I can't afford to buy a new one, so my grandpa who worked on computers in the military gave me a 40G Hard Drive that he had lying around, I've had it for a few months and now my master Hard Drive has only 1GB left, so my grandpa told me I can switch the Hard Drive he gave me to the Master (It is Formated) and switch my Master to Slave, then go into Bios and boot of the Slave, that way everything is supposed to save to C: or in other words my Formated Master Drive?

My computer detects both Hard Drives when the Main/Full Hard Drive (The one it came with) is master, but as soon as I switch my Main Hard Drive to the Slave it won't detect it, it detects the Master Hard Drive which is the formated one, but not the full one.

Why won't it detect it? It's all plugged in? As soon as I put it to Master, it will detect it but if I switch it to slave it won't.

**raptor_pa** · 08-03-2009, 06:00 PM

I'm going to take a guess here when you say not detected, that you mean won't boot. Have you verified whether the drive is identified in BIOS? Asuming you mean doesn't boot and it is identified in Bios then best guess what you are seeing is this. Windows installs it's boot loader to the first physical disk in the system. The BIOS has no idea what operating system it is going to load, so it goes to a specific physical address of the first physical disk to find the OS boot loader, which then points it to the location of Windows. In an IDE system this will be the primary master disk. So when you moved the original disk, which contains that boot strap code to slave, then put the 40 GB drive into the primary master ( first physical disk) the BIOS can no longer find the boot strap code to launch the OS. Options would be to reinstall windows and all your applications to the new drive qwhile it is in the master postion, then copy the data from the smaller drive, or put the smaller drive back in the master position, copy your data ( not programs or applications, they have to remain where they are installed) to the new drive to free up space, and from that point on, save all your data and install new programs to the 40 GB drive rather than accepting the default save and install paths which will point to the C drive. Hope that is clear, if you have any questions, let us know.

08-03-2009, 04:51 PM	#1 (permalink)
Zethioth Registered User Join Date: Nov 2008 Posts: 56 OS: XP Professional	Not Detecting Hard Drive? So here's the issue. My Hard Drive is small and since i'm only 14 I can't afford to buy a new one, so my grandpa who worked on computers in the military gave me a 40G Hard Drive that he had lying around, I've had it for a few months and now my master Hard Drive has only 1GB left, so my grandpa told me I can switch the Hard Drive he gave me to the Master (It is Formated) and switch my Master to Slave, then go into Bios and boot of the Slave, that way everything is supposed to save to C: or in other words my Formated Master Drive? My computer detects both Hard Drives when the Main/Full Hard Drive (The one it came with) is master, but as soon as I switch my Main Hard Drive to the Slave it won't detect it, it detects the Master Hard Drive which is the formated one, but not the full one. Why won't it detect it? It's all plugged in? As soon as I put it to Master, it will detect it but if I switch it to slave it won't.

08-03-2009, 06:00 PM	#2 (permalink)
raptor_pa Mod Hardware Team Join Date: Dec 2008 Location: Central PA Posts: 4,896 OS: XP	Re: Not Detecting Hard Drive? I'm going to take a guess here when you say not detected, that you mean won't boot. Have you verified whether the drive is identified in BIOS? Asuming you mean doesn't boot and it is identified in Bios then best guess what you are seeing is this. Windows installs it's boot loader to the first physical disk in the system. The BIOS has no idea what operating system it is going to load, so it goes to a specific physical address of the first physical disk to find the OS boot loader, which then points it to the location of Windows. In an IDE system this will be the primary master disk. So when you moved the original disk, which contains that boot strap code to slave, then put the 40 GB drive into the primary master ( first physical disk) the BIOS can no longer find the boot strap code to launch the OS. Options would be to reinstall windows and all your applications to the new drive qwhile it is in the master postion, then copy the data from the smaller drive, or put the smaller drive back in the master position, copy your data ( not programs or applications, they have to remain where they are installed) to the new drive to free up space, and from that point on, save all your data and install new programs to the 40 GB drive rather than accepting the default save and install paths which will point to the C drive. Hope that is clear, if you have any questions, let us know. __________________ Last edited by raptor_pa; 08-03-2009 at 06:02 PM.