Installing a new hard-drive

rmg1

Hi all
I've just tried installing a new HDD as a back-up. Wired it all up using the IDE cable, left the jumpers on "Cable Select" and plugged it (according to the sticker on the cable) as "Primary Slave 1".
The computer's not seeing it.
Anyone any ideas?

rmg1

Good question - how do I check?

rmg1

Don't know if it helps/hinders/makes no difference, but the cable has two connectors on it. One marked Primary Master and the other marked Primary Slave.
I've plugged the new drive into primary slave and left the jumper settings alone as they were already on "Cable Select"

exup

my 2nd hard drive for some reason wouldnt work on cable select so I made sure the jumpers were set to "master" on the original HDD and slave on the other.
If it still doesnt see it, may have to try finding the drive in the disk manager and naming it.

Start > Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Computer Management

Once in there you should see a menu with DISK MANAGEMENT near the bottom - select this and your attached drives should appear

Your problem drive may appear in the bottom section - without a drive letter so you may need to right click and name it

Wookey

exup wrote: »

my 2nd hard drive for some reason wouldnt work on cable select so I made sure the jumpers were set to "master" on the original HDD and slave on the other.
If it still doesnt see it, may have to try finding the drive in the disk manager and naming it.

Start > Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Computer Management

Once in there you should see a menu with DISK MANAGEMENT near the bottom - select this and your attached drives should appear

Your problem drive may appear in the bottom section - without a drive letter so you may need to right click and name it

This as above is what you need to do.

The new hdd needs to be initialised so your pc can see it, windoze may well recognise it as there but untill you set it up and then format it you wont be able to use it. If your using xp then format using ntfs.

rmg1

OK - now for the weird part.
If I connect it on the same cable as the main drive, I get a disk boot error as the system can't see the main drive.
Now I've connected it to the same cable as the DVD-drive, I can't see the DVD-drive.

According to the top of the new drive, no jumpers means it's a slave drive. There's no jumpers on either of the old drives and I don't have any (don't even know what they look like).

Anyone any ideas?

rmg1

Loaner - none of those in sight.
Now - just as a test, I decided to wire up the main HDD as primary master (on the cable) and the DVD-drive as slave on the same cable (took some doing, but I managed it).
I still can't see the DVD-drive.
Looks like it's something peculiar with the IDE cables in the machine. Anyone any ideas?

mdbarber

don't use cable select jumper the drives as master or slave and attach to cable in correct position, set main boot drive as primary master, new drives as sec master and set dvd to sec slave.
comments about bios needing to recognise drive are wrong, windows will pick it up if it has drivers installed for the controller anyway.
and have to say have a few wd drives and they are the worst to get working with other makes of drive

rmg1

OK - problem found but not solved.
The main HDD (with OS installed) assumes it's the only one unless I install jumpers to tell it otherwise.
The new HDD will b quite happy without as no jumpers tells it it's a slave.

Any know where/how much jumpers are?
(And no comments like £12-99 from M&S thank you!)

mdbarber

rmg1 wrote: »

OK - problem found but not solved.
The main HDD (with OS installed) assumes it's the only one unless I install jumpers to tell it otherwise.
The new HDD will b quite happy without as no jumpers tells it it's a slave.

Any know where/how much jumpers are?
(And no comments like £12-99 from M&S thank you!)

if you have found that out then you have one jumper so use it on the main hdd, install the new hdd as slave as it doesn't req a jumper and if you need another pm me ur address an i'll put one in post have a few spare

rmg1

OK - the original HDD came pre-installed from <ahem> Tiny and doesn't have any jumpers in it. With no jumpers in it, it assumes it's the only drive on that cable which is what caused some of the original problems which are now solved.

The new HDD was "acquired" from work and that doesn't have any jumpers with it either. That doesn't need any as it will assume it's a slave.

Should my local computer shop have them?