hard drive installation problems

[pyrus]

I have a western digital 80GB hard drive. I deleted everything on it using partition magic so there is no more C drive...I got a new hard drive and installed that one and it is my primary drive now I want my old hard drive to be my slave drive...it is in the cpu right now but the computer doesnt read it....its as if it isnt there. everything is plugged in correctly. All i want to do is be able to use this hard drive as an extra.

PS: i dont want to recover any of the data on the old WD drive...i wanna start fresh

[Paul Komski]

Two main points.

If you are adding the drive as a slave did you change the jumper settings to configure it as a slave.

You must also have a visible and apppropriately formatted partition on the drive. Since you have PM use it to create a new partition and format it.

[pyrus]

ive tried to create a new partition on the drive but the cpu isnt detected the hard drive....like i said its not even reading it....i went through bios and it isnt reading it either. when i go into PM it only shows my C drive which is a maxtor hard drive and the western digital doesnt even exist according to the computer

[Sylvander]

Go into the BIOS Setup and set all your drive types to "Auto".

If the drive parameters are configured manually in the BIOS Setup, then the BIOS acts as though the old drive arrangement still exists. It doesn't take account of the new arrangement. It treats the new HDD [although connected instead] as though it were the old HDD and takes no account of the new HDD when you have both connected.

By setting the drives to "Auto", they are all "Dynamically Auto-Detected" and their parameters correctly configured at EVERY startup, so if you change anything [jumper settings, number & type of drives, IDE controllers to which they are connected], the BIOS updates to suit and the drives are correctly set up for use.

You can "Statically Auto-Detect" them, but if you do so you MUST re-do that immediately after any change in the drive arrangement.
Or of course you can manually type in the CORRECT settings after each change in drive arrangement, but "Auto" is much better than both of these methods.

If you connected drives to both IDE controllers [Master on the Primary controller, Slave (or CD-drives) on the Secondary controller] , then both controllers MUST be enabled in the BIOS Setup. No point in connecting a drive to a disabled controller!

[pyrus]

ok when i set it to auto it reads it but i dont know what to do from here to get it working....but the cpu is reading that there is another hard drive

[Paul Komski]

Can Partition Magic now see this drive?

[Vashinator]

Check your jumper settings...I bet you have the WD 80gig set as MASTER instead of either SLAVE or CABLE SELECT. You should find the jumper diagram on the top of the drive.

[Paleo Pete]

With newer drives using 80 conductor cables usually the Cable Select jumper setting works best. Older drives using the 40 conductor cable were the opposite, cable select almost never worked reliably...

If the computer now recognizes the drive, it needs to be partitioned and formatted. The best way to go is use the drive manufacturer's installation software, usually available on their website. It can also be done by Partition Magic, Win98 Startup Disk by running fdisk and if you plan to install XP or win2000 the secondary drive can be formatted after installing the OS but the partitioning must be done beforehand.