HD Help!

[MGOtis]

Hello,
I bought a WD 5200 RPM 40 GIG HD today. I also have a WD 13.6 gig 7200 rpm drive. I installed the drive, and the BIOS sees both drives correctly. However, when it's loading windows, the windows screen comes up, then it goes black with a cursor in the upper left, and will not finish loading windows. I copied one drive to the other and tried booting off both of them w/ no luck. I set the 13.6 gig to master and the 40 gig to slave with the 13.6 on the end of the cable and the 40 in the middle. I could get into safe mode windows, but could not boot normal. I then disconned the 40 gig and booted successfully into windows after setting the 13.6 gig jumpers back to "single drive settings." All is apparently well, I did have to reinstall vid drivers though. Anyone know what the deal might be w/ this new HD and why I'm unable to get into windows when both are connected?

System:
WD 13.6 gig 7200 rpm
WD 40 gig 5400 rpm
Win 98se
VisionTek GeForce2 64mb GTS
Duron 600
Abit KT7

Please give me any sensible suggestions you might have, and let me know if more system info is required.

Thanks,
Otis

 

[tennesota]

I've dealt with two WD 40 giggers lately. For some reason I was unable to format the drives if the drives were set as SLAVE to a MASTER that was already in the machine. The only way I could get them to allow initial setup was to set the new WD drive(s) as a MASTER on the controller all by itself. Once I did this I could use the WD utility to setup the drive as a bootable device.

 

[MGOtis]

That kind of makes sense, but that doesn't make sense to me there is that BIOS recognizes both drives correctly... it's only when I try to get into windows that I experience problems. Did you experience the problems in the BIOS or just when attempting to load windows?

 

[tennesota]

I could see the drives detected as SLAVES in the BIOS. When I booted up with the WD utility diskette in the floppy drive it would tell me it did not detect any WD drives. Since it didn't detect the drive I was unable to make it bootable. I then decided to set the WD drive as MASTER and alone on the controller, then the WD utility would detect the drive and allow me to set it up. Once the drives were bootable I could do what I had intended all along.