I am having a problem installing a Maxtor hard drive as a slave drive on my Dell PC. The system recognizes the hard drive in the Control Panel, but it does not map it to a drive letter. The Max Blast software will not boot or install the drive. Here’s my specs:

Dell Dimension XPS, 600MHz, Pentium III with a factory installed ATA 66 controller card. It has a 20GB, 7200 Ultra ATA hard drive as the master drive. Operating system is Windows 98 SE.

Maxtor 15GB, 7200 RPM, EIDE hard drive kit (ST0151500U)

The jumper settings on the Maxtor are correct and the bios setting seem right based on the limited options I am given.

Anyone have any ideas?

Did you set the C: drive jumper to the Master setting and the new drive as Slave? The reason I ask is that Maxtor's I have used operate in a single drive configuration with no jumper or one jumper set horizontally in the park position, but the C: drive must be set to Master when a second drive is added. I later discovered that the C: drive would not detect properly while set as Master when the second drive (in a tray) was removed. Kept me busy for a while figuring that out.

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reido@my-deja.com

Friends don't let friends install Windows ME

Thanks. I set the Maxtor jumpers, but never thought to check the original drive. It's a Quantum drive, I'll check the Quantum jumpers and their site for jumper settings.

I have found that most newer drives have the jumper settings stamped somwhere on the housing near the jumpers. Also pay attention to the cable positions, mainly for uniformity, but if the Quantum was set for C(able)S(elect) (like so many off the shelf computers seem to be)and it was plugged into the middle connector then strange things could happen.

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mjc
To ME or NOT to ME....

The Quantum drive is on the end, but because of the location in the case you can't see the jumper settings and it is a real pain to remove the drive to see them. Since the settings are the same for the default (stand alone) and a master drive with slave present, I guessed that if the jumper settings are the problem they had to be set to cable select. So I changed the Maxtor to those settings with no change in results. Any other ideas?

When all else fails....put the new drive on a different "channel" or the secondary IDE channel. At least you can then determine if the new drive is ok.......it COULD (hopefully not) be a bad drive, they DO come bad from factory sometimes. Bios recognized it so that is a good sign...now ya gotta Fdisk it to put a partition in it.

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"As hard as a rock & dumb as a brick"...Windows CEMeNT

What is your Maximum Drive Letter set at? I know there is a setting that, if the Max. is set to, say, C: (1 HDD), then no matter what, you will not see the drive you added. (I forget where this setting is in Windows, but TweakUI (free download) has a tab for it.

I hate to say it but if you haven't removed the original drive and visually checked the jumper settings, you need to. Cable Select is flaky, sometime it works fine, sometimes it pukes...Pull the drive, tedious or not, and check it.

Randy also has a very good point, no matter what you do windows will not see the drive until you fdisk it, create a partition or 5, and format them. With a 15GB drive I'd go for about 3 partitions. Makes them more manageable and defrag takes less time.

The last drive setting shouldn't be an issue, although it is a possibility that shouldn't be ruled out. I've seen win98 machines with up to 15 drive letters, and have never had to foll with the last drive setting...which I can't remember where to find in windows either... http://www.PCGuide.com/ubb/rolleyes.gif

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Thanks for posting. I had gotten really busy and just about given up on this drive. I will follow up on your tips as soon as I have a block of time. It is a REAL PAIN removing the original drive, not only because of the location, but it's almost impossible to squeeze out the cable length.