Computer unable to detect IDE drives

Jolly_Roger

I thought it was too good to be true. I had another look at the IDE set up from the hard disk. This is connected to the motherboard. What was confusing me was that the IDE cable does have an 'intermediate socket', which is not connected to anything. Is that OK?
Any more ideas?
I don't think the hard disk would have failed, since it was making no strange noises 5 minutes before the computer was switched off then back on.

albertross_2

The socket in the middle is the slave socket. Most motherboard have 2 sockets, and you can put 2 eide devices on each socket (channel). The device on the end is called the master, the device on the middle is the slave. So you can put 4 devices in total in a machine, e.g. 2 hard disk, a DVD writer and a CD drive.

Drives can fail at any time, sometimes they make clunking noises, but if the electronics have gone, then they won't be recognised by the bios, and may not make any noise.

you could attach the drive as either a master or a slave in your other machine, to see if it is picked up.

Jolly_Roger

Is that a simple question of slotting the hard drive in to the other computer and then booting, or do you have to change anything else?

albertross_2

almost,, obviously turn the pc off first, you might have to change the jumpers to slave or cable select, and enable auto recognition in the bios on that channel

http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=slave+cable+select&btnG=Google+Search&meta=