help with IDE cables......!!!!

[Lopyswine]

okay so i am trying to add a new hard drive to my computer and i am having some problems.

okay so here is my set up:

primary cable: master: 60gb hard drive
slave: lite on cdrw drive

secondary cable: master: none????
slave: generic 56x read cd drive


okay so here is my problem i have been messing around and grabbing some of my old HDs and when i plug them into the master slot of the second cable nothing seems to work.....

i have tried the different cables and different setups and i can never seem to get my secondary master to work....


also i can't seem to get both the cdrw and cdrom drives onto the same cable...... when i do that neither is recognized... can you only have one cd type drive per cable? that doesn't make sense to me....


i have tried making my primary cable to have both HDs and the secondary to have both cd drives and it doesn't work....



are there some rules to IDE cables that i am missing?


i can just use the new HD however i really dont feel like transfering everything and i like the extra space... another option is an external USB HD however they are more expensive.

 

[Duvie]

What mobo are you running and its chipset...Things have changed since newer boards of the last few years but there should be no limitation of any combination of drives you place on an ide channel...2 cd-roms, 1 cd-rom 1 cd-rw, whatever....Any ata combination as well...ata100 w/ ata33, etc...

Check or try different cable if you have one.....


Make sure bios is setup correctly...auto on all the channels...

Make sure the harddrive is jumpered correctly.....I notice nowadays the jumper are more then just slave master and CS....I have seen master with no other things present on cable or master with 2 devices....

 

[Jennerstein]

Have you set your jumpers properly? Are you cables Cable Select cables?

Are you making sure that the primary IDE cable is set as master/slave when attaching two hard drives?

Have you enabled the second IDE channel in your bios? What are you bios settings when detecting new IDE devices?

 

[Lopyswine]

okay gonna go check my bios....


sorry to sound dumb but how do i know if my jumpers are set correctly....

 

[Lopyswine]

went into bios and all are autoed and enabled


okay again i may sound dumb but....

i just plugged in an old cd drive into the scondary master and it works great.

so my question is: does it matter that the second hard drive that i want to put into the secondary master isn't formated... meaning it has windows 98 on it and i have windows xp on my master HD..

i dont think that should matter cause this is hardware related and not software related.

 

[Jennerstein]

For jumpers, look in your Hard Drive manual.

Here's a link as a example. However, these jumper settings will probably not apply to your drives.
Pic of jumpers

Question: Are you trying to install your new hard drive as your Primary or Secondary Drive? Windows XP is kind of finnicky when you transfer information/settings between Primary drives.

Definitely sounds like you need to set your jumpers properly to get your drives detected.

 

[Lopyswine]

yeah so i dont understand how to do this jumper stuff.... unfortunately all my manuals for stuff is at home while i am at college...

 

[Jennerstein]

You should be able to find the manuals for your hard drive online.

Maxtor ATA installation guide

This has a nice graphic on how to set your jumpers. Depending on how old your Hard Drives are, it might not work, but the graphic has the standard setup for master/slave jumpers.

 

[Jeff H]

Lopyswine, here's an Ontrack site that will indicate what your jumper settings should be, if you can identify the brand and model of your drive.

 

[Lopyswine]

EUREKA!!!!!!

THANKS FOR THAT WEBSITE!!!!


GOT MY JUMPERS CONFIGURED AND EVERYTHING IS WORKING... SEEMS THAT LIKE A MORON I HAD MY THE JUMPERS ALL WRONG AND THAT MESSED EVERYTHING UP!!!!!!!!!!!


THANKS!!!

2ND HD HERE I COME