fdisk problem

[frazzuh]

I'm tryin to install win98 on a new computer i have and i need to partition the hard drive but when i try to run fdisk is says "error reading fixed disk." I'm using a western digital caviar 40gig. I've checked the connection but it could be my jumper setup i have the hard drive as the master and the slave is a cdrom drive. So what should the jumper setting be? Any help is very much appreciated

 

[soaplover]

if using an 80 pin ide cable make sure
that the blue connector goes on
the motherboard , the middle connector to ide device stapped as slave, and the end connector to ide device stapped master .
If your second ide channel is free i advice to put the cdrom there , this to spread the data load over 2 channels . It could also be that the cdrom interfers with the hdd on the same channel (try fdisk with only hd on ide1).
Also check for updated bios for your mb.

//Soaplover

 

[tshot]

it seems u have bad hdd. its partition table/masterboot gone bad. try low level format from if the following fails

fdisk /mbr. this tries to recreate the master boot

for low level and diagnostic utilty for this hdd try

http://support.wdc.com/

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[CobolKid]

Soaplover,

Good point, however an 80-conductor "40 pin" ide cable’s device orientation is actually determined by the connector color instead of the connector's orientation.

Blue = ide port (mainboard, etc.)
gray = ide secondary device
black = ide primary device

Seems this cable is commonly manufactured with the secondary connector at the end and the primary connector in the middle too, of the many purchased here (alone or with devices etc.) to date, the score’s about half & half.