HELP! (IDE Hard Drive Installation)

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SinisterMotives

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I just bought a third IDE hard drive and have tried every last jumper setting, but I can't get the BIOS to detect either a Secondary Master or a Secondary Slave - unless I'm just not waiting long enough. At one point, Windows booted and showed that the new drive was installed, but said it wasn't initialized. I can't get the BIOS to let me select which drive I want to format. The selected drive is stuck on C: no matter what letter I type in. I do not want to reformat the C: drive because it will wipe out Windows and a bunch of data. Does anyone know how to get this fucking piece of shit to work?
 
What OS?

Have you verified within windows (I'm assuming it's windows) that the proper IDE controllers are installed? Have you tried cable select jumper setting?

You can always put the drive temporarily on the primary channel just to make sure it's not a bad drive.

I know sometimes a drive first needs to be formatted with the manafacturers diskette.

Does the BIOS see the drive properly?
 
Windows XP Pro shows it working properly, and even identifies it by model number if I set the jumper to Slave, but I get a runaround in the BIOS when I try to format it.

It's on the second controller by itself, but I can't get past "Detecting Secondary Master" in either the BIOS or the boot sequence if I set the jumper to Single/Master. The BIOS will detect all three drives if I keep entering Y, but when I go into the Low Level Format section of the BIOS, it sets the new drive as Primary Slave and says "Detecting Secondary Master", then it pops a red message saying "Hard Drive initializing, please wait a moment..." and just sits there forever.
 
Originally posted by SinisterMotives
Windows XP Pro shows it working properly, and even identifies it by model number if I set the jumper to Slave, but I get a runaround in the BIOS when I try to format it.

It's on the second controller by itself, but I can't get past "Detecting Secondary Master" in either the BIOS or the boot sequence if I set the jumper to Single/Master. The BIOS will detect all three drives if I keep entering Y, but when I go into the Low Level Format section of the BIOS, it sets the new drive as Primary Slave and says "Detecting Secondary Master", then it pops a red message saying "Hard Drive initializing, please wait a moment..." and just sits there forever.

Do you have a SCSS controller on your motherboard? I always thought low level formatting was reserved for scsi drives. I could be wrong though!

Did this new drive come with a diskette? Just for the hell of it, see if you can boot on the manafacturers diskette and do a format that way. (I would take out the primary drive, make the new drive the primary, and format that way. Just trying to eliminate any problems until you get it formatted)

Also, testing the drive as primary on the first IDE channel will tell us whether or not the problem lies with the drive or the IDE channel.
 
I downloaded the Western Digital setup tool and finally got it working. :)
 
Originally posted by SinisterMotives
I downloaded the Western Digital setup tool and finally got it working. :)

Excellent!

I had a feeling it would be something along those lines. Just glad you got it working!
 
Probably was an LBA issue. There usually is never a reason to do a low level format, since it is done by the manufacturer. If you do need to do one you have to download the proper software from the manufacturer, it does not matter SCSI or IDE ! Formats should never be done from the bios. Also there are motherboards that will not recognize Master/Slave jumpers, you must set it to CS (cable select) and just use the proper connector on the IDE cable. More than likely though the problem was related to Logical Block Addressing or INT 13h misconfigs in the bios. I setup disks from the manufacturers many time self heal these problems with overlay software that resides in the MBR.
 
One more thing, just for future reference you might want to use Maxtor in the future, we have seen a 10:1 failure rate between WD and Maxtor !
 
I f you have a Maxtor for your master and try to set up aWD as subordinate, you will get an error message. You have to go in the registry and delete upper filters value and lower filters value. Also you must delete two sub keys then reboot and it works great. Just had that problem.
 
Originally posted by eric
One more thing, just for future reference you might want to use Maxtor in the future, we have seen a 10:1 failure rate between WD and Maxtor !

That's funny, I kept hearing Maxtor and Quantum drives were crap. :rotflmao:
 
Maybe these people just do not have enough experience. We are responsible for thousands of systems and I personally have been in this business for 22 years !
 

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