Hard drive not showing correct size when set with another drive

[lgebhart]

This question is for a friend of mine because I have never seen this happen before.

120GB hard drive was installed and windows xp installed on it. 128mb video card, and old BCM motherboard(don't remember the number on it), 950MHZ Athlon CPU, 512MB of Ram.

All is working with Windows XP on this drive

Connected second drive which is 20GB (to get his files off of it) and could not get it to read at all in the bios or Windows XP. Both drives are Western Digital.

While I was talking with him, he did get the 20GB to read as slave, but then the 120GB (master) changed to an 8GB reading in the BIOS (the WD1200 read fine but, he said weird (virus looking) characters) in the bios IDE description.

Since I'm not there I have no idea if there is an incorrect jumper setting on the hard drives.

I do know that the 120GB was reading fine in the bios until he got the 20GB to read.

Any help will be greatly appreciated.


lgebhart

A+, Network+, IC3
MAI for MS Office 2000

 

[micker377]

Sounds like both drives have an OS, and are set as "active". You'll have to check master/slave jumpers, and cable connections.

 

[lgebhart]

Thanks for your input, it was my first thought too.

Just found out it was a bad cable.

Brand new cable that came with a brand new hard drive, but obviously not working. He switched the cables on IDE 1 and IDE 2 and had the same problems with the CD roms when he did it, thus the bad cable theory. He is using an old 40 pin cable until I can get a new one to him and its booting fine.



lgebhart

A+, Network+, IC3
MAI for MS Office 2000

 

[micker377]

Yes, the 80 wire cable is more fragile than the old 40 wire.