squiggles

I recently uninstalled a zip drive. Since then, I cannot read from the A: drive, or my CD or DVD drives. Obviously, I have disturbed something, but cannot figure out what. All cables are in place. Can anyone help please? (The drives show up in Windows, as normal, but on every one of the drives, I get the error message The disk in drive ? is not formatted. Do you want to format it now? whenever I try to use it). It's a Win 2K machine. The A: drive is listed correctly in the BIOS.

Many thanks
squiggles

dai

uninstall them in the device manager reboot and let windows reinstall

mark3567

Hi,

Start from the beginning. Where was the zip drive located like on which ide cable? What did you replace it with? Did you change any of the things on the cable? List exactly what is on each IDE cable like IDE #1 and IDE #2. Why did you uninstall it? These questions should help us to understand what might be going on.

squiggles

Ok, here's what happened.

Here is as much as I can tell you:
O/S Win 2K
I have changed no jumper settings at all.
I have changed no motherboard connections at all
My (physical) top drive is a DVD-ROM (Samsung DVD-ROM ST-616T). Next is my CD writer/reader (HL-DT-ST CD-RW 8400B). Both of these are on the same cable, alone, with no others, and both are jumpered on the first setting.
FD is on its own cable – alone.
I have tried putting everything back the way it was, but that did not work. I’m at the stage now, that I wanted to be. DVD-ROM, CD writer/reader and FD all in, and no Zip drive.
(The Zip drive was on the same cable as the HD, and was jumpered as a slave)
I don’t think there is anything else I can tell you, except that:
The HD is 74.5GB, of which 19.8 GB is free. The details that I can make out are Maxtor 6L080J4 – this is working absolutely fine.
The BIOS is reading the A: drive correctly.
I have tried leaving a disk in all 3 drives when rebooting. To add to the conundrum, this is what happens on startup, if I leave disks in the drives. The A: drive does not read at all. The DVD and the CD drives will do a listing (I can get at *.txt files on both, but I cannot play a CD/DVD). Now, if I remove the CD and the DVD disks that I left in on reboot, and put them back in, I get the error message I was talking about - The disk in drive ? is not formatted. Do you want to format it now? whenever I try to use any of them. So, it is now happening on all 3 drives.


I'll try the uninstall/reinstall - but, as a last restort. It has to be something really simple that I have missed. Damn!

Sorry

Thanks to all trying to help
squiggles

mark3567

Hi,

Here we go:

If I understand what you are sayiing, then your jumpers are not correct. One must be set to master and one to slave and the master must be on the end of the cable and slave in the middle of the cable. (if you have both jumpered as CS, they may or may not work because this setting works some times but not always with all drives)

If those are working fine, then leave them alone. Just make sure that the Hard drive if it on the cable alone is set to Master and on the END of the ribbon cable. (I thought you said they worked fine, but later was not sure what you were telling me)

I would suggest you enter BIOS setup menu and be sure your boot order is set as:

CDRom
Floppy
Hard Drive or boot drive.

Save and exit.

Check the jumpers and cable placement of your cdRom and DVD drives and get back with us on what you find. This way we know most everything is set O.K. and then we can evaluate your results better.

Hi again,

Here is something you might want to use as a guide:


The master and slave jumpers must be set up correctly on your drives as displayed on the top of each drive.

DO NOT mix master and slave with CS (cable select) on the same ribbon cable. If one is Master the other MUST be slave. If one is Cable Select the other one on the same ribbon cable must be Cable Select. (Please note that the majority of hard drives are factory default as Cable Select)

Make sure the drive is placed correctly on the ribbon cable as shown below:

M
O
T
H ==Ribbon Cable=== Slave ===Master (end of cable)
E
R ..................................„» OR „º
B
O == Ribbon Cable==Cable Select==Cable Select (end of cable)
A ..............................( as Slave)……. ( as Master)
R
D


Ribbon Cables and colors of 80 pin cables look and are to be used like this:

Motherboard============Slave==============Master
………...….Blue…………...…..…..Gray…......……………………Black
.
Make sure a master is always present, because you can not run a slave without a master.

Cables must be the 80 conductor cables for hard drives and never any more than 18” long.

If you try cable select and that does not work, give the master/slave setting a try. Conversly, if the master/slave setting does not work, give the cable select setting a try.

If a Western Digital Drive t is the only drive on the cable, the jumper will need to be removed ( try removing the jumper and connect the drive by itself on the IDE channel and remember, the end of the cable)

Please note that the floppy cable red mark is put on opposite as the regular hard drivers for about 95% of the floppy drivers. Otherwise, the red mark faces away from you as you work in the case or you could say it faces the power source for the drive. (only a few are different)

Please let us know if you have other questions or need more assistance.