Not Detecting Hard Drive.

[Trice]

Hm, i seem to be getting problem after problem today. Now i've taken a hard drive from one computer to another.

This hard drive is on an IDE cable aswell as a DVD rom, the Hard Drive has the jumpers as Master, and DVD rom has the jumpers as slave.

But when i try to boot up the computer i get stuck in BIOS, on the Detecting IDE Primary Master, it can't seem to find the Hard drive or the DVD ROM.

I've gone into setup to autodetect and it's the same result there.

I've tried a different IDE cable, and i have also tried to just have the Hard drive boot, it doesn't detect it still. I've also tried to slot the IDE cable into the second slot.

The hard drive is practically new, i took it from the packaging into a computer, which i then installed Slackware on, i believe i formatted it again though. So it should detect the Hard drive but it doesn't..

Any ideas? Thanks

 

[brady]

Since you reformatted, have you tried it in another machine to test it ?

 

[Trice]

Yep. I've come to the conclusion that it's some sort of Capacity issue, because it's working on another computer.

 

[brady]

What are the HDD specs ?

 

[Trice]

The HDD is a 160 or 200 gig hdd, i believe. Um, the CPU i was trying to put it on was a PIII 450 Mhz i believe.

 

[BVR]

Cables, don't forget that your IDE cables are also considered a point of failure.

 

[brady]

Dude, a 450 Mhz can only handle like a 10 - 20 Gb HDD...

 

[RicoDirenzo]

The issue is you can't run a DVD Rom and HD on the same Ide cable. Hard Drive on IDE 0 and DVD on IDE 1. Secondly, unless you buy a PCI raid card to run that High capacity hard drive, you PIII mobo is limited to 60 gigs if I remember correctly. It will recognize the drive but you will only be able to format the dirve as a 60 gig. Again....if I understand you coorectly...you cannot have your HD and DVDrom on the same IDE cable!!!!!!!

 

[t3hn4t3]

The issue is you can't run a DVD Rom and HD on the same Ide cable. Hard Drive on IDE 0 and DVD on IDE 1. Secondly, unless you buy a PCI raid card to run that High capacity hard drive, you PIII mobo is limited to 60 gigs if I remember correctly. It will recognize the drive but you will only be able to format the dirve as a 60 gig. Again....if I understand you coorectly...you cannot have your HD and DVDrom on the same IDE cable!!!!!!!

Not true, I have a cd-rw and a 20 gig hard drive hooked up on the same IDE cable.

 

[fitzjj]

Dude, a 450 Mhz can only handle like a 10 - 20 Gb HDD...

Rubbish hard drive capacity is not dependant on the processor.

Originally posted by RicoDirenzo
you can't run a DVD Rom and HD

Also rubbish, you will have no issues running a hard drive on the same cable as a DVD drive

it can't seem to find the Hard drive or the DVD ROM

If you formatted the hard drive then there will be no boot sector so obviously when the computer comes to boot it wont see one and will sit for a while searching before it realises that there is not one and give an error.

you need to install an operating system on the hard drive before it is of any use.

OR. the hard drive still has a boot sector on it from a previous operating system and is trying to boot from that. since you have different hardware this boot sector is probably useless, hence it is not booting.

Can you get to the BIOS screen? Do you get any beeps when you boot?

If you can get to the bios then there is likely nothing wrong with the hard drive. If however you cant get to the bios there is probably something wrong with the setups. Double check you have your master and slaves correctly done, you have your drives plugged into your powersupply and on the correct cable.