Hard disk on precision workstation 220

Is this a (Serial)ATA drive or a (Parallel)ATA drive? That is, SATA or PATA? SATA uses a smaller cable, smooth on the outside and generally coloured red or yellow. PATA uses a much wider ribbon cable on which you can see the individual wires. If it is a PATA drive (as I suspect), there is probably a jumper setting that needs to be changed, depending on what other drives are connected. Please post which type of drive it is, what other drive is on the cable (if PATA and if any) and which OS you are using.

Yeah it is PATA. I mentioned it above.This jumper thingie i do not understand about. I recently took out my malfunctioning drive and apart from the ide and power cable there was another cable that had a SATA cable like head but was very small in size

P.S Dell precision 220 does not have sata. I also have another drive (WD 20GBytes PATA) installed from which i want to boot so can you tell me the correct jumper settings and the jumper for this setup

I dug up an old drive to look at. On this one there is a legend molded into the plastic back showing which pair of pins should be bridged for Cable Select (CS), SLave (SL), and MAster (MA). On other drives that I have worked with this diagram has also been on the sticker on top of the drive. But somewhere on the drive there should be a diagram telling you which pair to jumper for each of the three modes. Assuming that you don't have an auto select cable (which would have master and slave prominently marked on it, and which should have both drives set to CS) you should set your 20 gig boot drive to MAster and your 40 gig drive to SLave. I also seem to remember that it was sometimes possible to plug in pata cables backwards, so if there isn't the filled hole in your cable you might try it the other way round (I think this was more of at problem with the motherboard connection, which should already be made). If you can't find the settings you might try leaving your boot drive alone (since it should already be set to master) and putting the jumper on the other to the middle position, which is slave on the drive in front of me.

I forgot to mention - sometimes the jumper codes are printed on the circuit board, so you should check there also if you can't find them.

any idea about the appearance of the so-called "jumper pins". Because i don't know about these and both of my drives only have a power cable and the IDE ribbon cable connected. Nothing else. Dug up some manual for the 40GIG's one on the internet . It showed me where to put the jumper pin for master,slave, Cable select and one more thing. But what i don't understand is

WHAT IS THE JUMPER PIN??????????!!!!!!!!!!!

When you look at the back of the drive, there should be at least three sets of connectors: the power connector, with its four large pins, the PATA connector with its 20x2 small pins, and the jumper pins, which are at least a 3x2 sections of small pins which look just like the PATA pins. There should be a small plastic plug, the jumper, pushed over the ends of two of these pins. The purpose of this is to make electrical contact between them, like a switch, and so if you take it off and look at it there will be metal contacts inside. When putting it back on, almost all drives that I have seen have the pins paired up and down; that is, when the jumper is on it should be perpendicular to the top of the drive. Lets see if I can illustrate with some ASCII art.
jumper pins with plug on set #3
power | PATA connection
oooo||::l||::::::::::::::::::::

Ok now i understand. I also had a look at the place you illustrated; between the IDE and power cable. Is this pin attached to a cable or just a small plastic device. I told you i took out a malfunctioning CD drive recently and there was some cable with a head like the SATA cables one: flat and small but instead of hollow space there is space for accomodation of small pins

There should not be a cable attached to the jumper pins, just a small plastic jumper as you describe. For any others who may read this thread, there is no guarantee that the jumper pins will show up where I illustrated, but I'm glad you were able to find them. Is the set of pins that the plastic plug is on separate from the PATA pins (I'm almost certain it is)? If so, these are the jumper pins. I've never seen a drive where they use part of the data connector strip for the jumper pins, and I don't think they would, but it's best to have all bases covered.
You can pull this jumper off with your fingers, they generally have notches to make them easy to grip, and push it on to a different pair of pins, which would then be 'jumpered', electrically connected. Be careful with this part - it is easy to lose!
This other cable that you describe for the CD drive should have four pins. It is an auxiliary audio connector, only used on CD drives. I think it's purpose is to provide an analog audio stream from an audio CD that you're playing to the sound card without the CPU load of converting it. Thats only a guess as to the purpose; what I do know is that it supplies audio and is only found on CD drives.

Ok i found the jumper pin. It is set to "Restrict Drive space to 32GB". It simply wont come out. If i set it on cable select "(for the IDE cable to DECIDE) will it harm my disk or no. Because that disk has a lot of priceless data in it and if i lose it my dad is gonna kill me.

I finally found the manual that you mention. I would not touch the 'limit drive capacity' jumper; it is probably there for a good reason. If the other drive is set to cable select, cable select is what you should set this one to. I have never harmed a drive by messing up the jumper settings; they just don't boot. If you are now stuck for a jumper because you can't use the size setting one, anything that electrically connects the two pins will work. Tin foil comes to mind. Just be doubly sure that it can only touch the two pins it's supposed to, and that the connection isn't loose.

thank you elel for your excellent support and patience considering that i am technically a slow learner. Once again a wave of heartfelt gratitude towards you  

  No problem! I'm glad to know it worked!