First installation of second hard drive

[pentak]

Hi this will be my first time installing a new harddrive and i was wondering if someone could tell me how to go about it. I know that i have to make the primary and secondary master and slave using the plugs in the back, but other than that i dunno what to do. I did that and started the computer but it beeps and doesnt do anything, i was reading somewhere that i should get a boot disk and boot up the computer with it go into bios and make it do an autodetect? I'm not positive so can someone tell me exactly what i should be doing?

Harddrive i want to install: Maxtor
Mobo: asus p4p8x
<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by pentak on 11/02/04 01:33 PM.</EM></FONT></P>

 

[Coyote]

I think you are plug/jumper problems. I don't believe a boot disk is neccessary. I don't use Win XP though (Win 2k sp4 and 98se for me)

First I recomend you go to Maxtors site and d/l the free proggie called Maxblast. It's very handy for formatting and parttioning HDs.

First check the jumper ("plug" as you refer to it) of the original drive. Make sure it is set to "master" (assuming that's what you want), if not set it to "slave".

Be careful if the old drive is a WD, If it was on the IDE channel by itself (no slaves etc) it may not have the jumper on it. When they are alone on an IDE channel, no jumper means "master". So if you add another drive, you must set the jumper to "master with another drive sharing the IDE channel".

The Maxtor offers master, slave,or cable select as far as the jumper settings go. I suggest forgetting about cable select. Rather set it to master or slave. Whichever you want.

Don't mix cable select and master/slave when you have multiple drives.

It may be a good idea to keep the HD labled as master on the connector at the very end of the IDE cable. The slave s/b on the middle (of the IDE cable) connector.

Note that Maxblast is a bootable proggie. In other words, put the floppy you create in, and boot (or reboot) and the proggie will come up automatically. You CAN'T put the disk in the drive once windows is up and click on it to open it. You MUST boot to it.

Oh, aside from possibility having the jumpers out of place, you may not have been able to boot if the IDE connector was inserted incorrectly. Double check that carefully.

When your mobo won't boot and gives you "beep codes", listen to those as they are trying to tell you the problem. Often the beep codes are in your mobo manual. Other times you have to use google to look them up.

Hope that helps.

Mobile XP 2600+ (11X200)
Abit NF7-S v 2.0
Maxtor 60GB ATA 133 7200RPM
512MB Corsair Twinx 3200LL
BBA 9800 Pro
Enermax Noisetaker 420 watts
Win2K sp4

 

[pentak]

Ok well here's the deal, i tried and failed miserably. Situation, i pulled out the slave HD when the compter was getting fixed, when i got it back and plugged the HD back in it didnt boot up.

I checked the jumpers and they were set up exactly as the manual said, so i thought it might be the IDE cable, so i switched it out and it still didnt work. The mobo should have auto detected the slave but i dont believe it did. I'm not sure what to do. If i take the slave out and just go with the master it boots to windows and works perfectly, the problem occurs when i plug the slave in. I tried following the manual to the best of my standards and it didnt work. Here's what happened.

1. Plugged the IDE cable and power into the slave hd.
2. started the computer up.
a. boots but then stalls right before the windows screen
b. went into bios and kinda played around, found out that the slave drive had no info there at all.
3. tried the slave HD as master, but iono what happened with that.
4. checked jumpers again, seemed correct.
5. switched out IDE cables, nothing productive.

Any suggestions?

 

[diplomat696]

Ok, you should definitely recheck that you have the 2nd hard drive jumpered correctly as slave and the jumper on the primary as master. Make sure that the ide cables are connected correctly (the right way around etc etc)
Make sure you have the correct drive in the bios set as the master boot/first boot device and that you have your secondary drive set up on the secondary channel in the bios as slave.
Weird that your having that problem, I can only assume that one of those 2 things has got to be setup incorrectly unless of course its just a bad hard disc...have u used it before as secondary? Or is it a brand new drive?

 

[Pavelow]

I assume you have Win XP as the OS on the old drive?

OK, your mother board likely supports Cable Select. I recommend setting both drives to Cable Select. Put your old drive (the one with the OS boot) at the END (master) of the IDE cable and put the new drive on the MIDDLE (slave) connection of the IDE cable. Use the NEW cable that came with the new drive. Ensure you have the correct end plugged into the mother board.

How big is the new drive? Anything over 137gb will NOT be recognized by WinXP. You need the accompaning software to tell WinXP to use the full drive.

Pavelow

Dell 8250, i850e 4xAGP 2.4ghzCPU 512mbPC1066RDRAM 120gbATA
GeF4MX420 SBL5.1 SamSung48xCDRW LiteOn851SDVDRW
RJ-45 to Compaq 9660, 233mhzCPU 104mbFPRAM 12mbVoodoo2 Win95a<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by Pavelow on 12/09/04 05:36 PM.</EM></FONT></P>

 

[Pavelow]

Oh, and one other possiblility. How big is your power supply? I'm assuming you have enough to support the second drive given all all other items running in your PC?

Pavelow

Dell 8250, i850e 4xAGP 2.4ghzCPU 512mbPC1066RDRAM 120gb & 200gbATA
GeF4MX420 SBL5.1 SamSung48xCDRW LiteOn851SDVDRW
RJ-45 to Compaq 9660, 233mhzCPU 104mbFPRAM 12mbVoodoo2 Win95a

 

[pentak]

well i would take all these things into consideration however the computer came build with the master and slave, i just happened to pop the slave out when the comp went into the shop, so it should all be working fine. The psu/jumpers/ide cables have not changed at all, it's all the same stuff, i think it has something to do with the bios setting or it's a bad hd. I'm not too good with the bios and need step by step instructions on even the littlest thing. Is there a way to test the HD to see if it's still good or gone bad?

 

[Pavelow]

If there is I don't know. Maybe Crashman has the answer. As for BIOS, you can access it with F2 (or what ever shows up on initial boot window) during the boot up. You can go through the settings and find the hard drive location. Should have HDD 0 and HDD 1. Check properties/settings for both. Do they both show up? Do they have the same settings except for master/slave?

Pavelow

Dell 8250, i850e 4xAGP 2.4ghzCPU 512mbPC1066RDRAM 120gb & 200gbATA
GeF4MX420 SBL5.1 SamSung48xCDRW LiteOn851SDVDRW
RJ-45 to Compaq 9660, 233mhzCPU 104mbFPRAM 12mbVoodoo2 Win95a

 

[pentak]

when i check it shows that the master HD was detected but has absolutly no info about the slave HD, even with this non detection the computer wont boot to windows.

 

[Coyote]

1) Longshot, but confirm the power connector to the slave actually has power. If nothing else (no multimeter)plug the power connector into a case fan and see if it's at least spinning.

2)You could try Powermax (free diag proggie from Maxtor). Since your BIOS doesn't see the slave I doubt it will work. But I'd prolly try it anyway if just for kicks.

Mobile XP 2600+ (11X215)
Abit NF7-S v 2.0
Maxtor 60GB ATA 133 7200RPM
512MB Corsair Twinx 3200LL
BBA 9800 Pro
Enermax Noisetaker 420 watts
Win2K sp4

 

[pentak]

Tried #1 works fine, dunno how to go about doing #2 but i tried booting it with the installation cd maxtor came with and no luck again.