Two Hard Drives, only one recognised in WinXP

  • Thread starter Thread starter Sidmon
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Sidmon

Newly bult and installed PC system (first time build!) Both IDE Hard Drives,
One master fujitsu 6 gb hard drive. One slave 13gb seagate. On start up both
are recognised by the BIOS. In windows XP though only the fujitsu master is
recognised. They are attached to the first IDE cable with black connector
(master) to fujitsu and grey (slave) to seagate. I have used both cable select
and master and slave set jumpers but still no joy. I have used the smaller one
as master because when I tried to set the seagate up as master it would only
show up as slave in the BIOS no matter what I did.
 
Sidmon said:
Newly bult and installed PC system (first time build!) Both IDE Hard Drives,
One master fujitsu 6 gb hard drive. One slave 13gb seagate. On start up both
are recognised by the BIOS. In windows XP though only the fujitsu master is
recognised. They are attached to the first IDE cable with black connector
(master) to fujitsu and grey (slave) to seagate. I have used both cable select
and master and slave set jumpers but still no joy. I have used the smaller one
as master because when I tried to set the seagate up as master it would only
show up as slave in the BIOS no matter what I did.
Click to expand...

Lemmee guess: NFORCE2 motherboard?
 
What should I set the Jumpers too on each Hard Drive. And where should I then
put the CD ROM drive.
 
Sidmon - typed:
What should I set the Jumpers too on each Hard Drive. And where
should I then put the CD ROM drive.
Click to expand...

It's a matter of some debate exactly how the devices are best
configured. My boot drive is Primary master & my 2nd identical h/d is
slave, CDR as Secondary master & DVD as slave. I use Cable Select which
determines which is which by position on the cable. Ideally both h/ds
should be on different cables but people who burn CD/DVDs may prefer the
other way round, I suspect it makes little difference as long as each
device is configured correctly.

Is there a Bios update available for your m/b? Does the 2nd disc show up
in the Disk Management snap-in? You may only need to assign drive
letters. If the second disc doesn't show up in Task Manager, you
probably have a hardware issue or faulty cable. I'd be rather suspicious
if I couldn't set a h/d to master if it has an active partition.
 
Is there anything in WIndows XP that I can check to see if theres any settings
that need changing for it to work. or is it a case of if the motherboard
recognises it but it doesnt work in XP then theres nothing XP can do about it.
Also why as mentioned earlier would the seagate only show as slave not master
even with the jumpers set correctly, yet the fujitsu shows as master no problem
but then the segate wont will only show as slave on motherboard and not
actually show on windows.
 
Sidmon - typed:
Is there anything in WIndows XP that I can check to see if theres any
settings that need changing for it to work. or is it a case of if the
motherboard recognises it but it doesnt work in XP then theres
nothing XP can do about it. Also why as mentioned earlier would the
seagate only show as slave not master even with the jumpers set
correctly, yet the fujitsu shows as master no problem but then the
segate wont will only show as slave on motherboard and not actually
show on windows.
Click to expand...

The Seagate or the cable is faulty or you haven't configured it
correctly after all would be my 1st prognosis. You could make sure your
Bios settings for IDE devices are correct. I prefer to have my 2nd disc
configured as an extended partition with no active volume. Another
possible solution would be to delete the Primary & Secondary IDE
channels in Device Manager, reboot & let them get redetected.
 
I would check the jumpers....setting one to master and one to slave.

I also have neglected to plug everything in.

Ofcourse you have to go into computer management and initialize the drive,
etc.

I've also had that problem if my power supply was about to go out. Usually
if I rebooted on those occasions it would appear.
 
Have tried setting to master and slave as previously mentioned....never worked.
How do I get to the parts of XP being mentioned to address my hard drives?
 
Sidmon said:
Newly bult and installed PC system (first time build!) Both IDE Hard Drives,
One master fujitsu 6 gb hard drive. One slave 13gb seagate. On start up both
are recognised by the BIOS. In windows XP though only the fujitsu master is
recognised. They are attached to the first IDE cable with black connector
(master) to fujitsu and grey (slave) to seagate. I have used both cable select
and master and slave set jumpers but still no joy. I have used the smaller one
as master because when I tried to set the seagate up as master it would only
show up as slave in the BIOS no matter what I did.
Click to expand...


Sid, something is awry with the Seagate. Seems as until you get it
where it will install/be recognized and run as single, master, you'll never
get both hd's running correctly. Sounds almost as if the Seagate has been
f-disked &/or formatted without using the "/s" switch, without which it is
not bootable.
HTH & good luck. sdlomi
 
Sidmon - typed:
Have tried setting to master and slave as previously
mentioned....never worked. How do I get to the parts of XP being
mentioned to address my hard drives?
Click to expand...

Still sounds like the Seagate has gone west. Just because the Bios sees
a drive, doesn't mean it's not faulty. Can the Seagate be set to Master
on the secondary IDE channel?

Can you try another h/d in the Seagate's place or can you try it on
another machine, does it have a working bootable partition, is there
essential data on it? Substitution is often the only way of determining
what's faulty. If you don't have any important data, consider
reformatting after doing a factory level reset using the Seagate
utility. The MBR may be corrupted & can rebuilt to restore it if you
want to recover data:
http://support.microsoft.com/defaul...pport/kb/articles/q69/0/13.asp&NoWebContent=1
Same link:
http://tinyurl.com/azqo
 
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