Hello to one and all, I have an msi kn72 mobo I installed new h/d formated insatalled software and all was fine. I then bought a new h/d wd40gig when i went to fdisk it i got no fixed disk present so I tried another h/d seagate 80gig and i got the same message so i reconnected the original hard drive and it's ok. I then took the seagate and installed it in another mobo hit fdisk and formated (I also did the same with the 40 gig) i then removed the h/d drive and reinstalled it in the msi mobo again i got the same message ( no fixed disk present) does anyone have an idea as to why they are not reconized on the msi board?

ps i did not install o/s when i reformatted in the non mojo

Two words:

Jumper settings.

Check the labels on your drives, you should find a diagram of the jumper settings. The setting you want for BOTH drives is Cable Select. Sometimes setting them Master and Slave will work with newer drives, but usually CS works best with 80 conductor cables, which I'll assume you have. I'm betting right now both are set to Master.

There is also an off-chance you got drives that won't cooperate together. It's not too common but I've seen it a few times, and have one of them. By itself it works great but no matter what drive I connect or what jumper settings I use it refuses to be recognized unless I combine it with that same manufacturer's drive.

Also check in BIOS, make sure both drives are set to Auto for the Primary and Secondary IDE channels. Should be the first BIOS screen.

Are the new hard drives recognized in the BIOS? If not, you will not be able to fdisk or format them and they will not show up as fixed disks.
Since you've tried 2 different drives and they work correctly in another machine, it doesn't sound like a hardware problem. My guess is the jumpers are set incorrectly.

Check the jumper diagram on the new slave drives - for example, some drives have a specific jumper setting for slave and others use no jumper for slave. Some drives are also fussy about position on the ide cable, like the master drive must be on the end connector and the slave on the middle connector. Also, check your new master drive jumpers to see if there is a setting for master with slave. It might be jumpered as master in a single drive setup.

Kimbo

edit: Hey, Pete, you typed faster than I did! :D

Hehe...I'm like that... :D

after reading the replies I went back and checked the jumper I then changed jumper settings but it was a no go. However ur suggestions did make me take a second look at the ide cables and sure enough ide 1 was connected to the cd rom... when I connected the h/d to ide 1 everything went along just fine.
This got me to think how come the original h/d worked connected to ide 2 cable.

I want to thank all who responded