Hard drive help

[Muglo]

Hello,

I have just put a WD Raptor in my system on a Abit AN7 motherboard. It used the SATA connections and I am booting WinXP Home from it.

I have a second hard drive that is an IDE WD Caviar 100 gig, that has XP Pro and all my mp3's and files. How do I hook it up so I can transfer my files from one HD to another? Will there be a problem with the XP Pro on the other 100 gig HD or that one is SATA and one is IDE? Do I have to change any jumpers are anything?

Thanks for any help in advance because im not going to be able to get back on the computer until I get home tonight.

 

[montag451]

It should be ok, as long as the system knows to boot from the right drive. Might be best to stick the IDE drive on the secondary channel, and as a slave just to make sure.
See the back of the IDD hdd to change the jumpers - don't use cable select.

 

[montag451]

Oh, one other thing, make sure that the jumpers concur with whatever else is on that channel.
For instance, if you are happy putting the IDE HDD on secondary channel as slave, then, make sure that any other device on that channel is jumpered as Master.

post another message if you are not sure about this and let us know how it goes.
Thanx

 

[Muglo]

Thanks for your help! All went smoothly.

One more question though.. How can I format and wipe clean the IDE drive now that I transfered my files I needed to my SATA drive?

Thanks!

 

[montag451]

Well done. And thanx for letting us know.

If you want to do the format in windows,
go to Windows Explorer, Right click the drive, select FORMAT.

If you want to do it from DOS, then get a boot floppy, and type:
format xx:
where xx is the device letter.

Good luck

 

[Muglo]

Thanks for your help! I meant alot!

 

[montag451]

no prob

 

[Muglo]

Encountered another problem..on boot up, I get this - "Secondary Master Hard Disk Fail" prompt and the choices, continue - F1, Del - to enter setup.

I enter setup to see if it is the boot order, and the bios only has one hard drive I can pick from in the boot order section?? So I exit the bios and press F1 to continue and it boots up fine to XP from the WD Raptor drive and the IDE drive shows up perfectly in Windows. I reboot again and get a the same "Secondary Master Hard Disk Fail," I press F1 and again it works and XP runs perfect with both hard drives showing an accessable.

Why am I getting "Secondary Master Hard Disk Fail" prompt at start up? I really don't want to have to press F1 to continue every time. I want that second hard drive so i can back up important files on it - no raid or anything - just useable for backing up files.

Any ideas, help, ultra appretiated!

 

[montag451]

Hi again,

This is usually a problem related to the hard disk(s) themselves; this may not mean that the hard disk is bad, but could mean incorrect cabling or another issue making it impossible to find the hard disk. The controller or interface to the hard disk could also be at fault.

Where I said earlier about using the hdd on the secondary channel as a slave, what else is on that cable - if there is another device, that should be set to master.
If there are no other devices, then the hdd can be set to master [by the jumpers on the back].
Also, best to try using the blue connector on the IDE cable to connect to the motherboard.
The End connector for the Master device,
The middle connector for the Slave device.

Let us know how it goes.
Thank you

 

[Muglo]

Wow I had a night...

After many troubleshooting attempts, it turned out I had to update my Bios. Did it - still had problems, cleared the CMOS, flashed it again and everything worked.

Everthing is running perfect now, thanks for the help!