Hard Drive Won't Boot Two Hard Drives

[adik559]

OK, i have a Dell Optiplex 270, 2.6 GHZ Processor, 1GB Ram, and a 40 GB Hard Drive. Well, I took out my "Working" Hard Drive from my other computer and i wanted to do have the 160 GB Hard Drive be my Slave Drive. So i hook up both drives and the computer says there is no hard drive at all, if i take out the drive, it starts up, so, I'm starting to think the drive is messed up, i take out the 40 GB drive and hook up the 160 GB Drive and it boots up, so, i know it ain't the drives, now I'm thinking it's the jumper on the drives, i move them around and i can't seem to get it to boot up, i have two hard drives, both connected on the same ribbon cable, i have a cable that goes to the front usb, and a cable that goes to my DVD burner. I have a floppy, but i disconnected because i don't use the floppy. Where the jumpers are there are Five rows of pins on all of them, how should i set-up my jumper settings, because i can't find anything on the net or I'm not typing the right thing to search for. Thanks To whoever can help me. Oh, i have IDE cables, not SATA. Thanks.

 

[adik559]

Anyone? I'm Lost Here, I Need A Little Help....

 

[dassox]

Assuming your DVD burner is also IDE, try putting the DVD burner and one of your hard drives on the same cable, with the hard drive set as the master (and on the furthest connector) and the DVD burner on either slave or cable select (and on the middle connector), and then give the 2nd hard drive it's own cable and you can set that one to master. That is assuming your IDE cable can reach. That's at least something you can try.

 

[adik559]

Thanks for the response, i got it to work, i opened the case, then i took off the jumper to the master hard drive and i put that jumper on the slave setting on the 160 GB hard drive, but it still don't read on the bios, why is the next question.

 

[Wamphryi]

Ok I have a suspicion that the two drives wont play nicely on the same controller. The 160 GB will be using ATA 6 to allow it to hurdle the 137 GB limit that many old controllers have. With this in mind is it possible that the presence of the 40 GB drive which will be using an earlier ATA standard, is inhibiting the 160 GB from working its magic? The best way around such problems is to buy a basic SATA RAID PCI card and plug a SATA drive on to that. With the right drivers you should have no problems and your SATA drive will be able to move on to later builds. If you must use PATA then run the 160 on your secondary controller.

 

[adik559]

If you must use PATA then run the 160 on your secondary controller.

Well, I have no choice, lol, but what do you mean by secondary controller?