my primary hard drive

2480 Views 13 Replies 5 Participants Last post by Bracius, Apr 22, 2002

neopetrie

Discussion Starter · Apr 7, 2002

Ok,

I tried putting a new 20gig 7200 hard drive in, and it is not working. Right now it is in as Primary Master, my other hard drive is secondary master, and my dvd is secondary slave. Well, when I boot up my system, it takes a while when detecting my IDE drives (but all 3 are detected), then says that the Primary Hard Drive has no 80 cond. cable installed. Then after another little while it says "Primary Hard Drive Failure, press F1. So I do, and the computer continues booting, and in that little table showing the drives and so forth, it says "none" under Primary Master. But then Windows loads fine and all my programs work great. The only other thing I notice is in my Device Manager it says that there is a problem in my Primary bus Master IDE Controller. I load a new driver, fix it, reboot, and the same problem occurs.
The strange thing is that I have switced my new hard drive to Primary slave, and when booting there is no failure message, and it shows up in that little table even, but then the computer says: Verifying DMI Pool Data, and it just stops there. It never gets passed that. So, I am not sure what to do. I have tried all different kinds of hookups. Please help! thanks a lot,

~Peter

Save

Status: Not open for further replies.

1 - 14 of 14 Posts

legless

· #2 · Apr 7, 2002 (Edited)

i presume you prepared it correctly ie..fdisk/restart/format...NOT fdisk/format..????
i would try dvd as master on the secondary IDE....and your other HD as slave on the primary
i would also try a new IDE cable as some of the older ones don't suit the new drives.....

Save

· #3 · Apr 8, 2002

You need to use an 80 wire ide cable with this drive for it to work properly.
Look at the ide cables and you will see the difference between them.

Also the blue or red end has to go on the motherboard.

Try it you'll like it..

Save

neopetrie

Discussion Starter · #4 · Apr 9, 2002

....

I bought a new conductor cable, and now it just says hard disk failure when I boot up....

Save

· #5 · Apr 9, 2002

OK what exactly do you want to do with these drives.

A. Make the new drive your main drive and copy everything from your old drive to it.

B. Use your old drive as the main drive and use the new one for added storage space.

C. Some other configuration?

Oh! what brand are these drives? Maxtor, Western Digital or some other.

All this information is needed to be able to make the proper decisions on what procedure to follow.

See less See more

Save

neopetrie

Discussion Starter · #6 · Apr 9, 2002

info

So, they are both Western digital Drives. My older one, a 9 gig drive I have windows on and want to keep as my main drive. The new one, a 20 gig drive, I want to use as extra storage space.

Save

· #7 · Apr 9, 2002

Okey Dokey lets try this.

Put the 9 Gig. on the primary ide and set it as master with the jumper on the hard drive, This will go on the last connector on the cable.
Put the 20 Gig. on the Secondary ide and set it as master with the jumper on the hard drive. This will go on the end of the other ide cable.
Put the DVD drive on as the seconday slave by putting the jumper on the slave position and putting it onto the connector next to the 20 Gig. drive.

If the 20 Gig. drive is brand new you will have to fdisk and format it so the operating system will recognize it.

If the 9 Gig. drive is not ATA100 and the 20 Gig. is ATA100 you would be better off copying your 9 gig. over to your 20 Gig. and using this as the master. Then formatting the 9 Gig. for storage.
More on this later, First lets get this thing running right.

If you need help fdisking and formatting I can send you a link for this, OK

See less See more

Save

neopetrie

Discussion Starter · #8 · Apr 14, 2002

a step forward, I think

Ok, so I have my hard drives set up with my 9 gig on primary master, my 20 gig on secondary master, and the dvd on sec. slave. I know this isn't how you suggested, but it didn't work that way, and it works this way. My computer starts up no problem... No disk failures or anything when loading. Now, I think I kind of botched the fdisk and format part. When I get to windows a 'D' drive (my 20 gig) shows up in My Computer, but when I double click on it it says: "A device attached to this system is not functioning." So what do I do from here? Have I messed it up beyond repair? Thanks for your help.

Save

neopetrie

Discussion Starter · #9 · Apr 14, 2002

ooops, correction

So in the reply I just posted, I said I set my 9 gig as pri. Master. It is not. It is set as Pri. Slave, and this is how I set it up differently thatn you said. But It does not work as Pri. Master for some reason. Sorry for the confusion.

Save

· #10 · Apr 14, 2002

These drives should work with any configuration available if they are jumpered properly.

I hate to ask this but do you know the model numbers of both drives?

I you can find the numbers on the drives post them here and I will see what the jumper positions should be.

Save

Rob

· #11 · Apr 15, 2002

Speedo,

Don't forget about the HD detection in the BIOS.

Save

· #12 · Apr 15, 2002 (Edited)

Isn't it amazing how sometimes you overlook the most simple of things.

neopetrie

Do like Rob said and set the bios to autodetect the drives and see if this helps.

Thanks for bringing it to our attention Rob.

Speaking about overlooking stuff I have to go turn my E-Mail notification back on.

Thanks for reminding me Rob although you didn't remind me directly you did remind me. If this didn't make any sense to you that's OK because it makes sense to me....

BTW Howdy Rob nice to meet you and Welcome to the forum..

See less See more

Save

bigwilly

· #13 · Apr 16, 2002

heres an idea, set all your bios drives to auto
plug in just your 20 gig on the primary
and your cd on the secondary
load your op system and get everything running
then plug your 9 gig onto the primary cable as a slave
do one thing at a time so you can troubleshoot where the problem occurs, the 20 gig will run better as your drive with your operating system
and of course use an 80 conductor cable with your 20 gig on the end

Save

Bracius

· #14 · Apr 22, 2002 (Edited)

I don't add HDD to offten but I seem to remember that you cannot have two primary IDE devices. You can multable salves but only one primary IDE. Man....... I am trying to remember what it looks like..... something like master, slave, auto-select.... that right?

Save

1 - 14 of 14 Posts

Status: Not open for further replies.

Top Contributors this Month