IDE Limitations of Windows?

[Guest_imported]

I just got another hard drive, and have started to get bad block errors, freezes, etc...&nbsp;&nbsp;Microsoft troubleshooter tells of windows directly recognizing only 2 IDE hard drives, and tells me to look at &quot;the knowledge base article&quot; but does not give any links or kb article numbers.&nbsp;&nbsp;I really like my 3 hard drives, and would appreciate any info anyone has on this.<br><br>Thanks much! <p> Anonymous God<br><a href=mailto: anongod@hotmail.com> anongod@hotmail.com</a><br><a href= > </a><br>"Drawing on my fine command of language, I said nothing."

 

[Karl Blessing]

Well its not a Windows limitation , it's more of a hardware limitation, you can only have upto 4 IDE devices per Controler (most motherboards only have one controler) , You should be able to use all three HDD, plus a extra for like a CDrom and such, other than the bad block errors, this would be a physical error with your harddrive, are you sure you are not dropping it, or sticking it near magnets, or turning off your computer with out shutting down, how old is the PC, and/or Harddrives. <p>Karl<br><a href=mailto:kb244@kb244.com>kb244@kb244.com</a><br><a href=

http://kb244.com>

</a><br>Experienced in : C++(both VC++ and Borland),VB1(dos) thru VB6, Delphi 3 pro, HTML, Visual InterDev 6(ASP(WebProgramming/Vbscript)<br>

http://www.brainbench.com/transcript.jsp?pid=629151

 

[MasterRacker]

To clarify a little:&nbsp;&nbsp;You can have 4 IDE devices per 2 channel controller (a master and a slave on each channel).&nbsp;&nbsp;You can never have more than 2 devices per cable.&nbsp;&nbsp;If you are adding a third drive I assume you are placing it on the second channel.&nbsp;&nbsp;Many drives are shipped configured to be added to existing systems as a second drive.&nbsp;&nbsp;In other words, they are configured to be a slave device.&nbsp;&nbsp;Look at the drive and see if there is a Master/slave jumper.&nbsp;&nbsp;If the drive you are adding is going on alone on the second channel it needs to be a master. <p> Jeff<br><a href=mailto: masterracker@hotmail.com> masterracker@hotmail.com</a><br><a href= > </a><br> Of all the things I've lost in life, I miss my mind the most ...

 

[ATCal]

Just to take things a bit further, Abit has a board called the BE6R2. It has 2 UDMA66 ports and 2 EIDE ports, giving you a possible 8 IDE devices. I have used 6 at once, nullifying the 2 drive limitation. <p>Al<br><a href=mailto: atc-computing@home.com> atc-computing@home.com</a><br><a href= > </a><br>

 

[edfair]

Now that the 3 drives are settled. If the third drive is installed correctly, recognized by W95by the partition table and attached as drive e:, then your bad block error and freezing have got to be a failure of your ide controller channel to communicate with the hard drive. There are drives and controllers that just don't want to work together due to timing problems.&nbsp;&nbsp;<br>As a test can you reconfigure your new drive to c:, and load 95 on it to see if it will work as a standalone. It it does, then you may want to reconfigure the system so the new one is c:. If it doesn't work as standalone C: then get it fixed.<br>I have run across this type of problem several times in Unix. <br>Can I make an assumption. Drives 1&2 are on primary controller. Drive 3 is on secondary selected as master and identifies correctly in the bios.<br>Do you have a CD? on the same cable with drive 3? jumpered as slave?<br>Can you disable the CD if assumption is correct, and run scandisk on drive 3 to see if the drive still fails.<br>These are the steps I would take but no guarantee that it will show anything. <p>Ed Fair<br><a href=mailto: efair@atlnet.com> efair@atlnet.com</a><br><a href= > </a><br>Any advice I give is my best judgement based on my interpretation of the facts you supply. <br>
Help increase my knowledge by providing some feedback, good or bad, on any advice I have given.<br>

 

[Guest_imported]

Thanks for the ideas.&nbsp;&nbsp;Let me give a little more info.<br>This is a new Dell Optiplex 733 / 256 ram.&nbsp;&nbsp;Windows 2000 SP1.<br><br>All IDE Devices are set up as Cable Select, as I find this to work with the least amount of problems (until now <br>Primary Motherboard controller has the 13 gig HD and a CDRW on the end of the cable.&nbsp;&nbsp;Secondary Motherboard controller has a 6x DVD-rom, and an LS-100 drive on the end of the cable.<br>When I first got the external controller (<A HREF="

http://www.siig.com"

TARGET="_new">

http://www.siig.com</A>

- UDMA-66), I had the 2 hard drives (13 and new 40 gig) on the Primary Motherboard controller, and the external controller Primary running the CDRW.<br>These problems first started happening when I got the second 40 gig, I figured it would be easiest to have both large drives on the external controller, so I moved stuff around to the configuration shown before, with the external controller Primary running both 40 gig HD on Cable Select.<br><br>I have tried different combinations of Master/Slave, Primary/Secondary.&nbsp;&nbsp;I have run the Maxtor Diagnostics on all 3 Maxtor drives, and all comes up clean.&nbsp;&nbsp;Maxtor Diagnostics can see through the external controller.<br><br>Running chkdsk within a dos window occasionally gives errors on the drives (all 3) and tells me to run it with an /f switch.&nbsp;&nbsp;I do, and all is well until I reboot, or any read/write activity happens on the drives.&nbsp;&nbsp;Running chkdsk from Disk Properties freezes the system on the 2 40 gig HD on the external controller.<br><br>I am unable to format either of the 40 gig HD from within windows, or copy data to or from the drives.<br><br><font color=red><u>Questions</u></font><br>-Am I crazy, or does the windows hard drive troubleshooter say that windows can only recognize 2 IDE HD's without modifying the registry? - Wouldn't make sense if it was limited to 2.<br>-What else can I try to get this to work consistantly?<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;-Is the controller card bad?&nbsp;&nbsp;How can I tell?<br>-Is this possibly an issue between the siig controller and the Maxtor drives?<br><br>Thanks again for the help.&nbsp;&nbsp;My motherboard croaked today (maybe this was the problem), so Dell is sending me a new one this week.&nbsp;&nbsp;It was getting 3/4 of the way through the initial bios load screen, and freezing.&nbsp;&nbsp;Told Dell I had absolutely no idea why it happened.&nbsp;&nbsp;When I get the new one, we'll see if it helps at all.<br> <p> Anonymous God<br><a href=mailto: anongod@hotmail.com> anongod@hotmail.com</a><br><a href= > </a><br>"Drawing on my fine command of language, I said nothing.

 

[edfair]

Well, you have just joined Karl on the bleeding edge. Your blood.<br>Suspect a speed issue more than anything else at this point. And I don't have anything to go on other than gut feeling. And my first instinct would be to go to SCSI but thats not practical for you.<br>What about cable lengths on the externals? What else might the cables be close to? I've never used cable select so there are lots of things I can't address.<br>suspect that troubleshooter gets confused. Don't think anybody at MS could imagine a setup like yours. They write for people to use one big drive , at most two. Over that and they expect you to get stuff off the network.<br>How about crippling your on board controller, both sides and readdress the SIIG to be primary. With both drives. And see what happens. Know it is a pain, but you are charting new reefs. <p>Ed Fair<br><a href=mailto: efair@atlnet.com> efair@atlnet.com</a><br><a href= > </a><br>Any advice I give is my best judgement based on my interpretation of the facts you supply. <br>
Help increase my knowledge by providing some feedback, good or bad, on any advice I have given.<br>

 

[bytemaster]

Cable select should not be used.<br><br>Cable select is for certain systems by certain manufacturers (ceratin IBM and Compaq models to name a few).&nbsp;&nbsp;These setups use a <b><i>special cable</i></b> to select the Master and Slave.&nbsp;&nbsp;This means that which drive is master and which drive is salve depends uppon which connector the drive is plugged into.<br><br>Under a standard IDE setup, you use a standard IDE Cable (Or an ATA/66 cable).&nbsp;&nbsp;In either of these setups the jumpers, not the cable, determine the Primary and Slave devices.&nbsp;&nbsp;The good thing is is you only have to worry about one cable (channel) at a time.<br><br>Each channel/cable can only have one master and one slave.&nbsp;&nbsp;In most setups, the Primary Master would be the C drive.&nbsp;&nbsp;Primary Master meaning the Master drive on the Primary IDE channel.<br><br>Now, depending upon how your motherboard and adaptor card are configured depends upon which drive will try to boot first, but for starters, just make sure that you always have one primary and one slave on each channel, unless you have only one device on a channel,&nbsp;&nbsp;in that case, it usually doesn't matter which it is set to (refer to manufacturers documentation).<br><br>Please note that anything I have said here has to do with getting it to work, not with performance.&nbsp;&nbsp;That is a whole other issue.<br><br>Good Luck.<br><br>Jeremy Hannon<br>Brainbench &quot;Most Valuable Professional&quot; for Computer Technicians<br><A HREF="

http://www.brainbench.com"

TARGET="_new">

http://www.brainbench.com</A>