Hard drive horror

[Bluto]

Hi everyone...

Well...I'm not stupid, but I'm not an expert either. Guess you'd say I know enough to either be dangerous or a pain in the ass.

All I've been trying to do is install a second hard drive to my computer. Running Win98 currently has a 2.5 WD hard drive. It's nothing exotic. I got a second 30G hard drive at a show. It's a Maxtor. I don't have anything exotic on my system at all but I have installed hard drives, modems and printers before without too much trouble.....till now.

So you all know....I have my original drive (the Western Digital (WD)) set so it's the primary master.

I set the bigger one (Max.) as a slave. The Max drive works...it's been partitioned with an active dos partition it has Win(* loaded on it now too.....thanks to the help of a friend of mine at work. He loaded it on thru his system here at work, so the drive works and is ok and all that stuff.

I have tried various jumper settings on both drives. I CAN get my computer to recognize either one or the other without too much trouble, but it will NOT recognice both at the same time. All I really want is to make the bigger one a seconday drive I can use as a storage for files and to put extra copis of things on my smaller main drive.

Anyway...I can set both up in the BIOS just fine...it sees both drives, but when it boots it eitehr doesn't see one or the other or it doesn't see both. Usually if it sees one at all it's the Max. drive, but it never reports that it's found any kind of primary drive. I think it's seeing my CDROM as the secondary master.

When my friend at work partitioned my drive(the Max.) he had a western digital drive in his system too....so my thinking of a conflict wasn't any good.

This is a royal pain in the ass....WTF?

Does anyone have any ideas on this. It's like pulling teeth when in fact this shouldn't really be that tough.

If anyone has an orange crayon and can explain to me how to set this up I'd sure like to know.

By the way...my friend also used EZ-Max, or EZ-BIOS to configure my drive....it was the only way we could get windown on it. I think EZ-Max is a proggy from Maxtor's website for bypassing Window's system BIOS for dealing with larger drives.

Ok....I'll shaddap now....thanks in advance.

Bluto

 

[Technonut]

You need to have the Maxtor on the secondary IDE port set as master. What motherboard are you using, and what do you have on your IDE ports besides the hard drives?

 

[Bluto]

Technonut....

I guess I don't know what you mean by the secondary IDE port. My original hard drive has it's cable-end that plugs into it and midway in thats ame cable is another cable-end for another hard drive. That is what I'm plugging into the Maxtor drive. I have a floppy drive and a CDROM in my system.....nothing else. Well...nothing except a pci modem.

My system was a bad decision in buying a generic clone computer...which I won't do again, but I've had the motherboard out and there's nothing identyfing who made it. I have a manual for it, and I do have some documentation at home I got from somewhere...it MAY have some kind of ID but I can't recall just now.

Bluto

 

[AC]

Check the jumpers on both drives again. Drives by both brands in the past have a different configurations as "single drive" and "master with slave".

 

[Bluto]

AC....I've checked and re-checked the jumpers. Doesn't seem to matter what their configurations are....nothing seems to work.....<sigh>.

Personally I'm thinking about a trip out my 5-story apartment window!

Bluto

 

[AKA]

Make sure only 1 of the drives is active at a time.

 

[Technonut]

Set the jumpers on the Maxtor to master, and plug it into the IDE cable that your CDROM is on. (secondary IDE) Set the jumpers on the CDROM to slave. Use the top connector on the cable for the Maxtor, and the middle connector for the CDROM. You should still have the other cable free (primary IDE) for the Western Digital hard drive alone set as master.

In your BIOS, there may be a setting for Auto Detect of the devices on your IDE channels. Set it at Auto if you could. It would be something like, Primary IDE master &quot;Auto&quot;, Primary IDE Slave &quot;Auto&quot;, Secondary IDE Master &quot;Auto&quot;, Secondary IDE Slave &quot;Auto&quot;. It would be helpful to know which motherboard we are dealing with.

 

[Bluto]

Technonut....

Sounds good...I'll give that a go and see what happens!

This is crazy...it's just a hard drive....aaack!

Bluto

 

[boomerang]

Listen to A.K.A.

If I understand your post corectly, you've got an operating system on both drives.

I did the same thing once and had nearly the same problem you're having. Playing with the jumpers and IDE connectors gave different results and when I had it set right(?), it would boot up but I would be in compatability mode. Drove me nuts for along time.

Set it up like Technonut says and when it boots check if you're in compatability mode.

 

[Factor5]

OK heres the dilio, buy a cable select cable, plug the master drive into the end and the slave in the middle, turn your computer on and it works, i got a maxtor 8.4 and a maxtor 30 in my comp, it runs fine, cable select is the only way to go

 

[Bluto]

Technonut....

I FINALLY had time to try your suggestion.....and I haven't thought about the cable select cable idea yet, but I may end up trying that too. Anyway....I did what you suggested and my regular drive and the CDROM drive cmoe up, but not the Maxtor drive. It doesn't show anywhere!

I set the jumpers, swapped the cables....everything you suggested. The boot-up is smoother but still no second drive. WTF?!

Here's one thing I noticed tho. There is only one cable-end on the CDROM ribbon cable. My Maxtor drive is connected to it now adn the CDROM is connected to the middle connector on the same ribbon cable my original hard drive is connected to.

Got any suggestions?

Anyone?

Bluto