random Posted October 26, 2006 Posted October 26, 2006 Not an inmburn related issue but i figured some here could steer me straight. I am adding a second hard drive and having problems. My original cable was not dual so I picked up a dual cable and it is installed on my main HD, and boots up just fine, my second hd when it is connected causes both hard drives not to be recognized. In bios I always have unknown master and unknown secondary master, of course I am trying to add it as a slave and have tried all jumper positions and it always just makes the main hard drive unrecognizable. Setting up the dvd drives as slave and master was a piece of cake, any ideas on what I may be doing wrong? TIA
spinningwheel Posted October 26, 2006 Posted October 26, 2006 Not an inmburn related issue You're right...next time post questions like this in the chat section and all will be forgiven.... If it's a EMachine you have to use cable select as that is what they do. I've used them since they were introduced in the States and never had a problem...like so many other manufacturers produce... For other machines I'm sure someone will come along who knows exactly how to do it with another machine...
polopony Posted October 26, 2006 Posted October 26, 2006 basics for a second hard drive is they are configured as slave and master ,there will be jumpers you can set up on the back of the drives( Csel ,slave ,master ) .Since you are adding one it will be set for master out of the box and the one you have in the computer will be recognized as master(if its Cable Select change it to master ) . You will change the one you add to slave . With the IDE ribbon (cable) the connector furthest away from the from the motherboard connector will be for the master drive the one in the middle will be the slave .Shut down the computer, before you add the drive make sure that the connectors are properly seated ,dont force anything and then restart it .Windows XP will recognize the new hardware
random Posted October 26, 2006 Author Posted October 26, 2006 First of all apologies hate to make anyone go grrr! Well I finally got it going, earlier I had my son jumping on my back as I had two pc's torn apart. It was just a matter of powering down and restarting and working with the bios, I figured it out as in bios, it does not recognize the slave drive for my optical drives so I figured it also did not recognize the slave for hard drives. I did not know what the chat forum was for, I thought it was litterly chat. Note to myself, post off topic in chat and also FF spell check does not work for litterly
Shamus_McFartfinger Posted October 27, 2006 Posted October 27, 2006 Alot depends on how the things are setup by the manufacturer. For example, some HP computers (like the crappy pavillion I once had) would only recognise a drive as master if it was connected to the middle of the IDE ribbon cable and slaves attached at the end (which is different to every other PC I've ever used). The CD-ROM would not boot the recovery CD unless the drive was configured as drive M: (which took me a while to figure out). More info would help alot.
random Posted October 27, 2006 Author Posted October 27, 2006 (edited) Alot depends on how the things are setup by the manufacturer. For example, some HP computers (like the crappy pavillion I once had) would only recognise a drive as master if it was connected to the middle of the IDE ribbon cable and slaves attached at the end (which is different to every other PC I've ever used). Ironically it was a HP Pavillion that I took the drive from and put it into a Dell, now I have the issue of securing the HD. The dell 2400 does not have a bay to place an extra HD but there is room but there are kits available and extra brackets you can add, I may rig something up myself. Edited October 27, 2006 by random
dbminter Posted October 27, 2006 Posted October 27, 2006 First, something to consider, if you have no PATA optical drives, you may just want to consider not using a dual cable and connect each as a Master to one each of the PATA controllers. Second, when you say the 2nd HD isn't recognized, do you mean it's not seen in the BIOS or Windows doesn't recognize it/Windows won't start? If the BIOS recognizes it or you can see it in DOS, then, what is happening is Windows is finding the wrong drive first and not booting because Windows is on the other drive. BOOT.INI needs to be edited to show the proper XP drive to start from. Third, do you have a mixture of SATA and PATA HD's? Because one thing I tended to notice with mixing both types is the BIOS assigns SATA drives priority first, but, Windows idiotically assigns PATA drives priority to getting a drive letter. (Probably because XP was created before there was even an SATA?) Which would cause a problem like that described in the Second section above. Fourth, yeah, shit HP/Compaq drives. Had a Maxtor HD in a Compaq die 31 days after purchase. HP wanted the whole damn PC sent in to replace something that IBM simply would swap out the HD for: send you a replacement and then charge a credit card IF you didn't return the broken one. Screw that.
lfcrule1972 Posted October 27, 2006 Posted October 27, 2006 I added a second HDD to my Dell Desktop last year and also discovered that they don't provide a spare bay for an additional hard drive - tight bastards ! I looked around for a device to hold them both but the stuff I found was silly priced so in the end I made something myself, nothing flash - in fact I used zip ties (cable ties etc) to hold it in place and to allow some air to circulate round it !! It's been working fine now for almost a year !
dbminter Posted October 27, 2006 Posted October 27, 2006 Yeah, I've used duct tape, styrofoam, all kinds of patches over the years when they didn't have a spare bay or, for whatever reason, the drive obstinately refuses into a bay, etc. Now, I just say fuck it and slip the bast into an external enclosure! I think the weirdest fix I ever had to employ was on my first 286 machine. Something in the fan made it rattle and whine when turned on. The only thing that stopped this LOUD, distracting whine was to do two things, BOTH necessary: first, hang the printer cable from a nail on the wall; second, place a heavy object (I used a brick.) on top of the case. REAL annoying. Still, beat the one machine where I had to open the case every time I needed to reinstall Windows. It always locked up detecting the SCSI card I needed that I put in the PCI slot during detecting the hardware. BUT it WOULD detect it POST a Windows install. So, had to open the case, remove the card, install Windows, then, reinsert the card, install it, test it, then wait a few days to make sure all was well before replacing the cover. Sort of like how when XP SP 1 first came out and that ASPI.SYS or whatever it was was not being freed in XP. Thus, with some things like Alcohol, the IDE optical drives had to be disconnected to update Alcohol there for a while post SP 1 install before they fixed the installer to work right.
random Posted October 27, 2006 Author Posted October 27, 2006 (edited) dbminter. lfcrule1972. Thanks for the ideas, I ended up taking a nerf football that I bought last Sunday but on dog had already destroyed so I cut two slices, 1/4 inch wide and placed in between hard drives and ratcheted down with cable ties. Should work as a good shock absorber. As for the old HD, Pavillion, it is fat32, should I change it to NTFS? Mainly plan on using it for ripping. Edited October 27, 2006 by random
cornholio7 Posted October 27, 2006 Posted October 27, 2006 i would make it ntfs if you intend to use it for ripping
random Posted October 27, 2006 Author Posted October 27, 2006 (edited) Thanks! I am trying to access the control panel for the second drive, I am not given an option to select which drive from control panel and there are some programs I would like to remove. I may just re-format and partition the HD but want to hesitate as i sometimes am compulsive. There is nothing on the HD that I am concerned about, it has brain dead Millennium installed as an OS and that is about it with a few programs I would like to get rid of. Where is my CP for the second drive? TIA Edited October 27, 2006 by random
dbminter Posted October 27, 2006 Posted October 27, 2006 Sorry, you have me at a bit of a loss. A control panel for a hard drive? Or, something from Control Panel that accesses the 2nd drive? I can think of a few things that can give you some access to them, but, for different reasons: Add Hardware, Administrative Tools, and System.
random Posted October 27, 2006 Author Posted October 27, 2006 Sorry, you have me at a bit of a loss. A control panel for a hard drive? Or, something from Control Panel that accesses the 2nd drive? I can think of a few things that can give you some access to them, but, for different reasons: Add Hardware, Administrative Tools, and System. How can I uninstall programs that are on my second HD? I suppose I could set bios to boot off of windows on the second drive and then I would have a control panel for that drive, has to be an easier way...?
cornholio7 Posted October 27, 2006 Posted October 27, 2006 if you don't want to save the contents of the drive just format it. right click my computer, go into manage, go to disc management and see if you can locate your drive there, it probably needs to be activated
polopony Posted October 27, 2006 Posted October 27, 2006 dbminter. lfcrule1972. Thanks for the ideas, I ended up taking a nerf football that I bought last Sunday but on dog had already destroyed so I cut two slices, 1/4 inch wide and placed in between hard drives and ratcheted down with cable ties. Should work as a good shock absorber. As for the old HD, Pavillion, it is fat32, should I change it to NTFS? Mainly plan on using it for ripping. the foam rubber also acts a s an insulator so be aware that its not letting the heat disapate like it should ,heat is the #1 enemy of electronics and over heating anything really cuts down on its service life
dbminter Posted October 27, 2006 Posted October 27, 2006 if you don't want to save the contents of the drive just format it. No, don't do that! You'll destroy all of time and space if you do!
dbminter Posted October 27, 2006 Posted October 27, 2006 How can I uninstall programs that are on my second HD? I suppose I could set bios to boot off of windows on the second drive and then I would have a control panel for that drive, has to be an easier way...? Well, there won't be a need for a second Add/Remove Programs. Regardless of where they are installed to, anything that will have an entry in Add/Remove will appear in Windows's Add/Remove Programs. There's only the one Add/Remove Programs.
random Posted October 28, 2006 Author Posted October 28, 2006 How can I uninstall programs that are on my second HD? I suppose I could set bios to boot off of windows on the second drive and then I would have a control panel for that drive, has to be an easier way...? Well, there won't be a need for a second Add/Remove Programs. Regardless of where they are installed to, anything that will have an entry in Add/Remove will appear in Windows's Add/Remove Programs. There's only the one Add/Remove Programs. The only thing is and it is not worth worrying about is that there are a few obsolete programs on the HP drive that I should have removed first yesterday, they do not show up in Windows add and remove programs. Any new programs added will.... great, I was not sure, this way I can just delete them from there. Thanks dbminter.
dbminter Posted October 29, 2006 Posted October 29, 2006 Well, unfortunately, not everything shows up in Add/Remove. Also check your Start Menu entries for these programs. There are Uninstall entries there that won't show up in Add/Remove due to well, usually sloppy programming. And, sometimes, there are uninstallers in the program directories that aren't referenced ANYWHERE.
JasonFriday13 Posted October 29, 2006 Posted October 29, 2006 (edited) One of the first computers I got was a few years ago. It was a 80386 SX 40 Mhz processor with 8MB of RAM, an ISA IDE, floppy, and serial port card, and an aweful 256KB ISA 16 color graphics card. Oh yeah, it also had no CMOS battery . I also got it free from the high school. Every time the computer is left off for four or five hours, the charge from the capacitor bank runs out and the data in the CMOS is lost, so everytime I started it, I had to set the number of sectors, cylinders, and heads, and set all the other settings before finally booting windows 95, which was also pretty slow once running. Also, it used a 800MB harddrive that 'parked' (spun down) after every three or four minutes of no disk activity, which was a nightmare when I was partitioning it. Once the disk spun down, the changes I made to the harddrive where not written, so I had to restart it and speed the process of partitioning it so that it wrote the changes before it spun down. [edit] I also bought and broke a second hand cd writer with this machine - on the same day . [/edit] Thankfully, that computer was retired to the closet when I got my current machine. The harddisk is now used in my old Pentium II 450 Mhz MMX with 128 MB RAM and my old 64 MB GeForce 4 MX 440 . My current machine used to have Windows ME on it , and switched to XP sometime in the latter half of last year. When I upgraded, XP actually played my games faster than on Win ME . And now I have Windows 98 SE on a fat32 partition primarily for compatibility reasons (primarily for playing Gizmos & Gadgets - I know, how childish is that?). When I come into some money, I will build a new system with most of the latest hardware (will still stick with the same software though). Edited October 29, 2006 by JasonFriday13
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