In my bios, Primary IDE Master and Slave are not detected. Secondary not even displayed.

JIMMYGJR60

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Dec 6, 2014
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This Problem Has Never Been Solved, although it is showing as solved


My computer was running fine. It crashed. When I brought it back up, the two hard drives installed were no longer being displayed as Primary IDE master and slave and Secondary master and slave as it had been prior to the crash. In the bios, when I go to BOOT (Hard Disk Drives), the 1st Drive appears but it is the smaller, 80 gig and the 2nd Drive appears but it is the larger, 200 gig, but they ARE being recognized. Also under BOOT, (Boot Device Priority) the 1st Boot Device is Sony USB. the 2nd Boot Device is the 80 gig Hard Drive, and the 3rd Boot Device is ATAPI CD-ROM.

I would like to know how I get under MAIN, the 200 gig to be detected and shown as Primary IDE Master along with the slave; and the 80 gig Hard Drive to be shown as the Secondary IDE Master along with the slave as it was prior to the crash. No wires or jumpers have been changed. Also at one point, it was so messed up that the Hard Drives were being displayed as the 7th and 8th Master.

I am running XP which is what was installed on the computer from the onset. I don't want to upgrade OS since I use this for recording and all my software is old and will only run XP.

I have the Intel 955/945 Series Support CD. Mine is an ASUS w/945P Chipset with Pentium Dual Core 2.66Ghz/533MHz Front Side Bus. Both hard drives are Glyph Seagate SATA 7200 RPM although I was instructed to set it up for RAID. There is a DVD+/-RW Drive and no A Drive.

Given the above information, can anyone tell me how to get the 200 gig Hard Drive to be recognized as the Primary IDE and the 80 gig to be detected as the Secondary IDE Master which is how it was initially set up in 2007 when the computer was built.

Would it help if I disconnected both drives as well as video and sound cards and boot. Then connect the largest Hard Drive and boot again. Then connect the smaller Hard Drive and boot once again to get the drives recognized and in the correct order.

I received many questions but when I tried to answer those who were attempting to help me, my replies were showing up as solutions to my own problem.

I still would like to get this computer running because in addition to being very expensive, it has thousands of dollars of studio recording software on it which I am unable to access. Thank you for your kindness.
 
Solution
Hi

Do you have 2 or 4 sata hard drives or a mixture of SATA and ata hard drives?
You have the bios setting for sata controller as ata compatible, which is common for older PC's with XP

Is windows booting up?
Do you know which drive has windows on it?


It is likely one of your hard drives has died if bios can only see 1 or 3 drives


For 2 hard disks I would expect primary master & slave to be shown in bios
For 4 hard disks add secondary master & slave in bios

Usually the primary hard drive is plugged into the lowest numbered sata port

Read the motherboard user guide for details on hard drive configuration
From Asus website or driver disk cd

Regards
Mike Barnes
Hi

Do you have 2 or 4 sata hard drives or a mixture of SATA and ata hard drives?
You have the bios setting for sata controller as ata compatible, which is common for older PC's with XP

Is windows booting up?
Do you know which drive has windows on it?


It is likely one of your hard drives has died if bios can only see 1 or 3 drives


For 2 hard disks I would expect primary master & slave to be shown in bios
For 4 hard disks add secondary master & slave in bios

Usually the primary hard drive is plugged into the lowest numbered sata port

Read the motherboard user guide for details on hard drive configuration
From Asus website or driver disk cd

Regards
Mike Barnes
 
Solution