2 hard drives on 1 data cable, doesnt work ?

[Haz101]

I am having a strange issue I have just bought a new hard drive and when i hook it up on the same data cable by machine wont even boot up.

Though when i split one data cable to run a CD drive and a hard drive it seems to work.

Is this normal ?

Can anyone tell me what is going on ?

thanks

fab

 

[cdogg]

You can hook the second hard drive up and then immediately enter the BIOS after turning on your PC. You should be able to see the current boot order and make sure the old hard drive is still listed first.

Your problem might be that the new drive is being assigned as the master instead of slave. The PC sees the master before it sees the slave, and might be booting with the wrong one.

What version of Windows are you using? Have you tried using a Win98 boot disk, which will give you access to both hard drives in DOS? That way, you can check to see which drive is being assigned C: and which is being assigned D:


~cdogg

"The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources."
- A. Einstein

 

[Comtech]

New drives are shipped with the jumper in the default position of Master, or Single. You'll have to change the jumper to Slave, or if using an 80 wire cable, put it on the grey connector, and jumper it CS (Cable Select).
The blue connector goes to the mobo, the black to the master (also jumpered CS). Cheers,
Jim

http://members.cnx.net/reboot/

 

[Haz101]

ok im running xp home atm, and yes the jumpers are set on slave im sure if not its on nutral.

So I can use win 98 boot disk for win xp ?

fabs

 

[wolluf]

If you've a floppy drive, you can always boot from win98 boot floppy, whatever's on the hard drive. If you're sure about the jumpers (I would double check them - also some drives have diffeent settings for master on its own and master with slave - so check your existing drive's settings too), as cdogg says boot floppy will give you access in dos to drives (can't read ntfs partitions - if your xp is using ntfs, but fdisk can see them). So, after booting win98 floppy, run fdisk (enable large disk support). If it detects both disks, there will be an option 5 (to change the disk you're accessing). If there is or not, use option 4 to view first disk's partition details. If its the new drive - it won't have any partitions.