How to install three hard drives 1

[Mezzzo]

Hi

How do I setup a PC to run three hard drives. My drives are C: WinXP IBM Deskstar 41 meg, Second drive Maxtor 61 meg and the third is 9.1 meg Maxtor. I also have a Toshiba SD-R5002 DVD drive. How do I configure the bios and need an idea as to the jumper settings for this combination of hardware. I tried various jumpers and bios settings but at bootup only one of the drives that didn`t have a OS was found.
I removed the second and third ribbons and at least now I have access to my C drive.

Thanks for the help.

 

[dkdude]

Mezzzo,

I assume that your HDs are IDE (not SCSI). Here's how it goes:

There are two IDE channels -primary and secondary. Each channel can have two drives attached -one master + one slave. Use jumpers to setup master/slave mode. One quick way of seeing if you've done it right, is to go to the BIOS's HD auto config -if you see all (HDs), then it's all set. CD/DVD drives are often PnP and will show up during POST boot.

In your setup I would do this:

-Fastest HD as master on primary IDE ch. *
-Slowest HD as slave on primary IDE ch.

-Last HD as master on secondary IDE ch.
-DVD as slave on secondary IDE ch.

*) Fastest drive should have the OS and swap/page -file installed to enhance performance!

Remember that you only can access partitioned drives... Partition with FDISK (Win9x/DOS) or from the administrative tools in the control panel (NT, Win2k, XP).

Also, don't worry about wrecking any hardware. If it's set to an illigal configuration the PC just wont boot/power up/work properly -nothing is blown §;O)

Good luck


Jakob