Slave HDD - Please Help!!!

[VCM]

Hi again,
I have transferred my Seagate 80gb Primary Hard Drive from my old PC to my new PC as a Slave drive. The drive was running Win 98SE and I formatted the drive in my old PC (As FAT32).

In my new PC I have a 20gb Primary HDD running Win 2000 Pro.

When I put the drive in my new PC, BIOS reads it no probs.
On first boot, windows recognised the drive and it looked fine. Windows said this device is working properly, and I could use the drive as normal.

I have installed the drivers for my motherboard and Graphics on the new PC and windows won't read the slave drive anymore! I have tried to format the drive and I get the error message - Windows cannot complete format. When I try to access the drive I get another error msg saying the parameters are incorrect. I have checked the jumpers and all connections. BIOS will still see the drive but windows does not!

Is this problem due to me formatting the drive in my old PC? I have tried everything to re-format the drive but cannot!

Any advice would be most appreciated. Thankyou in advance, VCM

[Abbadon]

I don't know what causes this problem. It may be due to formatting it in your previous machine, although that shouldn't be a problem normaly.

What you can do to fix this: if the 80gb hdd doesn't yet contain any important data (and I'm geussing it doesn't :) ) you could always zero-fill it, then format it in your new system.

Zero filling can be done by using one of the tools on the manufacturers website.

Not the most elegant sollution, and maybe there are better ways to do this. Might be worthwile to wait for other reactions...

EDIT: those manufacturers-tools will also tell you wether your drive still is in working order harware-wise. Might be that...

[pave_spectre]

This seems to be the same problem you mentioned in THIS Thread (http://www.pcguide.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=27529).

Have you tried the advice given in that thread?

[VCM]

Sorry about the duplicate post (communications mishap!!!).

I have tried Seagates diagnostic tests and the drive is fine.

The setting I had were:

Primary IDE = Master HDD + Slave HDD
Secondary IDE = Master CD Drive + Slave CD Drive

When I swap the IDE configuration ie:

Primary IDE = Master HDD + Slave CD drive
Secondary IDE = Master CD Drive + Slave HDD

The slave hard drive workd fine. Can anyone explanin this?
I still can't format the drive though. I get an error message saying ' Windows was unable to complete the format'.
Does this mean the drive does not need formatting or do I have a problem.

Thankyou very much to everyone that has replied, your help is appreciated.

VCM

[Abbadon]

have you already tried zero-filling the hard drive?

[pave_spectre]

If the drive doesn't contain any data you need to recover then grab a copy of seagates DiscWizard (http://www.seagate.com/support/disc/drivers/discwiz.html) and use that to zero fill and format the drive.
Be aware that doing a full zeroing rather than the quick option can take several hours on an 80gig.

[VCM]

Thanks again for your help. I am now downloading the discwizard software now. As soon as it finishes I will do what you said. I don't really know what zero filling is but I trust you! What exactly does this do?

Does the IDE configuration above look correct to you guys. Could this be my initial problem? Should I leave the settings as they are or should I be able to change them back once i have run Discwizard?

Do you guys have both HDD's on the same IDE?

Sorry to ask so many questions, but posting here is the best help around. Better than any tech support phone line!!!!

Cheers,

VCM

[pave_spectre]

Zero-filling writes zeros to the drive, removing any residual information which formatting doesnt remove, virtually making the drive like new.

How you arrange the drives is usually a matter of choice. If you plan to do a lot of disk-to-disk transfers, particularly of large files then having drives on seperate IDE channels may provide some benefit.

Personally I keep hard drives on the primary channel and optical drives (DVD and CDRW) on the secondary channel.

[sleddog]

Try disabling the slave 80gb drive in BIOS entirely. Windows 2000 does not need that BIOS information, it will detect and work directly with a slave (or secondary) drive.

Then in Windows 2000 Disk Management delete each partition on the slave drive, create new ones and format them.

(To access Disk Management: Start > Programs > Administrative Tools > Computer Management.)

(If Administrative Tools is not displayed, turn them on: right-click the taskbar, select Properties, Advanced tab, checkmark 'Display Administrative Tools' for Start Menu Settings.)

[VCM]

I have used discwizard to format the drive. It formatted as NTFS.
Now, when i try to access the drive, i get an error message saying:

'The disk structure is corrupted and unreadable'

I did a self drive test using the seagate utilities and it's fine!

What's going on? I'm pulling my hair out.

Again, I thank everyone who has taken time to help me out.

VCM