Computer won't recognise 2 new hard drives!

timread

I'm guessing that you have at least one optical drive in your PC (CD/DVD Rom or Writer). What IDE channel are your optical drives connected to? The Primary, or Secondary, IDE channel?

Try connecting just one IDE drive to start with - it will make troubleshooting this easier. Connect it to the Primary IDE if there are no other devices on this channel (CD/DVD). If you have optical drives on the Primary channel, use the Secondary channel. Connect one end of the IDE cable to the motherboard, and the other end to one of the IDE drives. Don't use the middle connector on the IDE cable yet.

Then go into your BIOS and make sure that both primary and secondary IDE channels are enabled, and set to Auto. See if the new IDE drive is detected by the BIOS.

That should be a couple of things to go on...

maniac886

timread wrote:

I'm guessing that you have at least one optical drive in your PC (CD/DVD Rom or Writer). What IDE channel are your optical drives connected to? The Primary, or Secondary, IDE channel?

Try connecting just one IDE drive to start with - it will make troubleshooting this easier. Connect it to the Primary IDE if there are no other devices on this channel (CD/DVD). If you have optical drives on the Primary channel, use the Secondary channel. Connect one end of the IDE cable to the motherboard, and the other end to one of the IDE drives. Don't use the middle connector on the IDE cable yet.

Then go into your BIOS and make sure that both primary and secondary IDE channels are enabled, and set to Auto. See if the new IDE drive is detected by the BIOS.

That should be a couple of things to go on...

Ok i have managed to make the computer recognise one of the ide drives. I have connected an ide cable from the secondary ide slot on the mbo to one of the 80 gig ide drives. It has recognised this one but not the other one as when i connect the other one as well it wont recognise ANY of the drives....what else can i do?

superscaper

maniac886 wrote:

Ok i have managed to make the computer recognise one of the ide drives. I have connected an ide cable from the secondary ide slot on the mbo to one of the 80 gig ide drives. It has recognised this one but not the other one as when i connect the other one as well it wont recognise ANY of the drives....what else can i do?

Whenever I've had that problem it's always been down to the jumper settings on the back of the hard drives, just make sure either everything connected on the IDE cables is cable select or put the jumpers in the right configuration for master/slave.

maniac886

superscaper wrote:

Whenever I've had that problem it's always been down to the jumper settings on the back of the hard drives, just make sure either everything connected on the IDE cables is cable select or put the jumpers in the right configuration for master/slave.

Thats my problem, I am not sure if they should both be on slave or....

I am guessing the original sata one is the master so would that mean the other two are slaves..... ?

Chippy_Minton

maniac886 wrote:

Thats my problem, I am not sure if they should both be on slave or....

I am guessing the original sata one is the master so would that mean the other two are slaves..... ?

On the same IDE channel (cable) one IDE drive must be set to Master via the jumpers on the drive and the other set to Slave. If, as you say, there are no jumpers on the drives then both use Cable Select. CS is only supported on the newer 80 wire IDE cables, not the older 40 wire cables. Look at the photo at the bottom of this page to compare the two cables and determine which one you have.

SATA is totally separate. Just make sure your BIOS is set to boot off the SATA drive (which Windows is on) because fitting the IDE drives may have changed this.

If still no joy, what are the make & model of the IDE drives?

maniac886

Chippy_Minton wrote:

On the same IDE channel (cable) one IDE drive must be set to Master via the jumpers on the drive and the other set to Slave. If, as you say, there are no jumpers on the drives then both use Cable Select. CS is only supported on the newer 80 wire IDE cables, not the older 40 wire cables. Look at the photo at the bottom of this page to compare the two cables and determine which one you have.

SATA is totally separate. Just make sure your BIOS is set to boot off the SATA drive (which Windows is on) because fitting the IDE drives may have changed this.

If still no joy, what are the make & model of the IDE drives?

You're a legend! I presumed they would both be set as slave, but I set one as master and the other stayed as slave, now the computer recognises all 3 hard drives, so I have 240gig and am very happy!

dekeweild

Make sure when you format the drives that they are set to NTFS Dynamic, not FAT32.

dekeweild

Make sure when you format the drives that they are set to NTFS Dynamic, not FAT32.