I know this will end up being something simple, but my brain's fritzed out after building this comp. What an undertaking! (Fun though.)

Okay, I have installed a new HDD as a secondary slave, and installed Win98 on it. It boots fine, and reads the drive as drive C. I then installed a second HDD as a primary master, and that reads as drive D. However, if I try to install a third drive as primary slave, it doesn't work properly. The system still boots, and drive C is fine. However, both primary drive won't read.

I know you can have more than one HDD per IDE cable, so what gives?

Edit: I was about to delete this post, but this forum is all about the learning process, is it not? http://www.PCGuide.com/ubb/smile.gif

I resolved the problem. Turns out a second drive had Win98 on it too. When I installed drives 2 and 3, the system tried booting from them, since they resided on the primary IDE. I simply had to set the BIOS to boot from HDD3, and it read both additional drives without a problem.

See... I knew it was something I should have thought of. Took me about 2 minutes to figure out. Actually, I figured it out when I initially made this thread. Isn't that always the way? http://www.PCGuide.com/ubb/biggrin.gif

Eep Opp Ork,
- Snarfleez.

[This message has been edited by Snarfleez (edited 06-11-2002).]

Hey Snarfleez,

AAH,AAH



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I was called "hacker" before there was a HeathKit.

Sorry hacker, I don't get your duplicated acronym.

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Eep Epp Ork,
-Snarfleez.

Check out "The Jetsons", from the original episodes. The one with Judy winning a date with Jet Screamer.

EEP, OPP, ORK, AAH, AHH is a major driving force.

Now if, it means something else, oh well, miscommunication.



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I was called "hacker" before there was a HeathKit.

Ohhhh!! Heh yeah, that's where I got the sig line from. I'm a big toon head. I see you are too. Not many people would know the name of the Singer. (Jet Screamer)

Actually, it's AH-AH... which is why it threw me. So yes, a slight miscommunication. We're on the same page now though. http://www.PCGuide.com/ubb/biggrin.gif

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Eep Opp Ork,
-Snarfleez.

You can install two hard drives in one ide cable.

try setting the drive with windows as primary master.
Then the second drive as primary slave.
their cable should be connected to ide1 on your m/b.

Set the third drive as secondary master.
its cable should be connected to ide2 on your m/b.

Check to see if they are all detected in CMOS.
If not, then something is wrong with one of your hard drive. try to remove one and determine which causes the problem.

Now, if they are all detected in CMOS, try using fdisk.

hope this helps...

rio....

This thread is from 06-11-2002 (nearly three months old) and if you read the end of the first post you would see that he resolved his problem, not because the drives weren't being detected, but because of a boot order problem and have the same OS trying to do the same thing at the same time (a case of one too many drives trying to be C:...the primary boot drive). Basically the primary boot drive does not have to be the primary master drive, but if it isn't you need to make sure you know what is where so a problem like the one in the original post does not occur.

Check the jumpers on the back of the HDD - make sure they're configured correctly.
If you have the 'cable select' option, you may have to use that - some controllers sulk otherwise. If there's another drive attached, set it's jumpers to 'cable select' as well - they will sort themselves out.

deddard,

Cable select is still flaky at best. One of the reasons cable select it flaky, is that many 40 wire cables do not support it (not properly wired for allowing cable select), so you would need a special "cable select" cable. Most 80 wire cables should support it, but not all do.

Problem two, cable select is not uniformly implemented among all the drive manufacturers, so if you are trying to hook up drives from different manufacturers you could end up with problems. With the same drives (or at least manufacturer) and either a 40 wire cable that supports it or an 80 wire cable it should work fine, but everyonce in a while there are still problems that pop up with drives not being recognised.

For other reasons/info see my above post...in this case it was a plain and simple software problem.