hard drive conflict?

[riverwalker]

I installed a 20gb maxtor drive last year, keeping my original 4gb drive, and partitioned it into 4gb partitions. I wanted to repartition the 20gb as I was constantly running out of space on C:. A friend had a spare 10gb maxtor that we temporarily installed to use for backing up my 20gb prior to repartitioning. We had to unplug the 4gb and the cd drive and install the 10gb as the secondary master. It worked and I copied all my stuff to it and repartitioned the 20gb into 2 partitions. But now I'm unable to get the bios to recognize the 10gb no matter whether I slave it with the 20gb or make it the secondary master as I did previously. Not only does the bios not recognize the 10gb but no longer recognizes the 20gb when they are both plugged in. It says that something is 'installed' but doesn't give the name and won't boot. And if I set it as the secondary slave with the cd it shows the cd as both master and slave. I'm assuming it has something to do with a bios limitation but don't understand why previously I could read both but now can't. At this point my main fear is that I've somehow lost my backed-up data on the 10gb.

Any suggestions would be appreciated!
Dianne

 

[cdogg]

Things to try or check:

1) Disconnect all other peripherals and external devices; be sure to remove all media from any CDROM or Floppy drives

2) Try the 10GB Maxtor by itself just to see if it gets picked up

3) Try the 20GB on Primary IDE "by itself" and the 10GB on the Secondary IDE "by itself"

4) Post back with the motherboard make/model and BIOS version #


ck_blk@yahoo.com

 

[tlcscousin]

Check the hard drive jumpers. By default all IDE peripherals are jumpered as master. If you have two devices on the same IDE cable both jumpered as master, either one will work or neither one will work.The drive usually has the proper jumper positions written on the hard drive.

 

[nightowl17]

Just a shot in the dark did you by any chance use the maxtor software to do your Partion? If so you may have to go into fdisk from the Microsoft boot disk and select a disk/Pation as active because when you use outside software to accomplish this Dos will not have done this
Hope this Helps

 

[riverwalker]

I can reply to a couple of the responses to my question: the bios is American Megatrends (ami bios) version 10; I can't give the motherboard maker as I've left the pc with someone in hopes that he'll find a solution (the pc is a sony viao, if that helps); the jumper settings I've used are those found on the maxtor site so I've been assuming that they are correct; and, the fdisk suggestion sounds promising and I'll pass it on, but if the bios isn't recognizing the disk at all will fdisk?

How would I be able to tell if the disk has failed? We tried to install it into another machine which also couldn't recognize it.

Thanks!

 

[edfair]

cdogg's suggestions will help you sort it out. Sounds like you've lost one HD in such a way that it is corrupting the drive ID.
You take it back to single to verify that it will ID alone, then ID the other alone, then try to ID both together and verify that both ID correctly. Ed Fair
unixstuff@juno.com
Any advice I give is my best judgement based on my interpretation of the facts you supply. Help increase my knowledge by providing some feedback, good or bad, on any advice I have given.

 

[MA5]

Hi all
The other problem could be that the BIOS has got confused.
Clear CMOS with the mobo jumpers.
Good luck