I have Compaq Presario 7470 Pc and i m trying to add another harddrive to the existing hard drive

[sj46256]

The instruction sheet that came with the new hard drive says that i have to check the option for auto detect the hard rive in the BIOS.
The 4 menu items i see in the BIOS is Main ,Storage,Security, Advanced.when i check every option i have in the every menu
but i dont see any thing like auto detect for harddrive in the bios.all i see is enable and disable.can some one help me in setting the Bios to auto detect the new hard drive.
appretiate for your help..

sj

 

[4824guy]

Just try plugging in the HD, set your master/slave jumper according to your setup, power up and see if the bios detects it. It should if that model is a recent one, which I believe you have.

 

[sj46256]

i have tried that too and when i boot the system with the maxblast software floppy that i got with the hard drive and tried to find the new harddrive but its just showing the master HD(old one)..
thanks for your help

 

[Paladinexe]

I added a harddrive to a Compaq about a year ago. I didn't use a boot floppy. Just booted as normal and the BIOS detected it automatically and updated the configuration. One note is that it was not a blank hard drive. You should be able to format a blank new one tho as you already have an OS on your master drive.

 

[Paulson]

I would think it'd just automatically recognize the hard drive.

How old is this computer?

 

[nullshark]

That's an old K6-II 500 MHz or so (I used to be the scourge of all IT departments everywhere... A computer salesperson)

Some older Compaqs use Cable Select for their IDE devices.

First, check the jumper settings on the current hard drive and the cdr/w...

Are they Slave and Master on the same cable?
Master and Master on two different cables?
Both Cable Select on the same cable?
or
Both Cable Select on different cables?

Connect the new drive using the scheme that's already present.

or...

Try plugging the new drive in to the cable that the cdrw is presently in (configure the jumpers the same) and see if that works.

Also know, that once you have put another harddrive in, the Restore CDs that came with the PC might mess up if you run them (you run that risk whenever you install new hadware with Factory Restore CDs)

 

[4824guy]

Another thing you can try is to try and use this drive alone by itself for now, just find out what the problem is. Unplug all other drives and set this one up as master. Then see if it is detected, as it should be.

 

[MasterHoss]

I've doen it on a 5700T series a few months ago. First off, those Maxtor, WD, IBM utilities suck!! Just FDISK--create your primary and/or your logical and extended partitions. I installed a WD as my primary master and used the OEM HD as the slave. The WD utility didn't work--I used FDISK, no problem.

Good luck.