installing second hard disk....

[tbwttihs]

i recently got a new PC. the hard disk in it is a 160 gig SATA drive, onto which i've installed windows. I would like to take the old 20 gig ATA-100 drive out of my old comp and install it as a second drive in the new one. i had a first stab at that last night, probably a bit hasitly, and just plugged it into a spare drive bay, put the ide cable into the only free ide slot i could see, and connected the power cable. however when i started windows it said something along the lines of "no IDE master found".

does anyone know what i have to do to get this up and running. presumably i have to change jumpers or something on the back of the IDE drive, and/or do something differently at the BIOS setup bit??

any help and suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

thanks,

Craig.

 

[rvnguy]

craigp83,

The cabling issue should be addressed with the conventions that are used for these devices. The cable has three connectors with two that are closer together and one a bit farther from the center one. This is the one that should connect to the mobo. A master drive connects to the other end connector and a slave drive connects to the center. Check the drive label for info on jumpering and connect correctly.

The BIOS settings must be correct for full function. As you are currently booting to the SATA drive, this is set correctly and would be set in one or more areas in BIOS. One would be the "boot order" section. This needs no change.

Find an area in BIOS that sets the IDE channel access. Insure that both the primary and secondary channesl are enabled. Save settings, exit and re-boot after setting this up back into BIOS.

The main BIOS screen should display the IDE devices detected. Insure that the "new" IDE Drive is recognized by BIOS. If not, check to see if the channel that it is on is set to automatically detect devices(usually by selecting the channel and enter will bring up a choice list). When detected, save and exit.

Your POST screens should also indicate recognition of devices detected. Windows should now see the drive and assigned a drive letter to it.

Hope this helps

rvnguy
"I know everything..I just can't remember it all

 

[paparazi]

craigp83

Presumably you have connected your old drive to the secondary channel, you just need to get master slave set between this drive and the CDrom, whatever that is (easiest thing is just to set the rom as slave to this drives master)
Remember that this ATA100 HDD needs a fine ultra IDE cable not the course 80wire IDE cable usually used for roms.

Make sure that the IDE channels are set to auto (to auto detect) in the bios, for both secondary master and slave (they could have been manually set or turned off)

Lastly you have to make sure that this drive is not sellected in your boot order settings otherwise the system may try to boot from this drive.

Martin



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[tbwttihs]

Thanks for the help from both you guys. Played about a bit (based largely on your advice) and managed to get it up and running.

Thanks again,

Craig.