Hard Disk not recongnised in BIOS...

Dotsie~tmp

Im having a problem installing a second HDD. Its a West Digi 200 (20GB).

First tried to set it up as a slave to main HDD. It hung at the boot screen and in the BIOS no primary IDE master or slave were visable. Jumpers were fine MS for main HDD and SL for WD200.

Next tried WD200 as master to main HDD slaved. This showed up the Quantum main HDD as primary slave but i had to mess with BIOS setting boot order to see the WD200. Even then when i tried to boot from floppy to fdisk it gave 'error reading from fixed disk' when i confirmed at large hard disk screen. On the next boot the recognition had dissapeared. I could boot windows up (give cant read partion errors) when i selected to boot from the slave but it had very poor performance and hangs with no recognition of the WD200. All fine again when i hooked up main HDD as master without WD200.

Next move was to take out main HDD and try the WD200 on its own as masteror single on primary IDE. This only showed as IDE primary master when i messed with hard disk access delay or boot order (selected 2nd IDE HDD instead of 1st). It would appear then as WD205E in IDE config in BIOS and i would boot to floppy. I could use fdisk whick showed just 8000M in partition status and when i tried to create it hung on checking disk integrity at 0%. Again it dissapeared at next boot.

This is a second hand though very little used HDD. Its for a PII system for storage. I also made sure that the master was on the end of the cable (if thats actually necessary). Any ideas? Might the BIOS not like this disk? Is it fecked maybe.

Inspector Gadget

...I smell a new(ish) drive in an old(ish) computer. Could you confirm this? (Make/model/clock speed/whatever you think is important)

[edit]One other thing. 40-pin IDE cables (for ATA33 or lower) expect the master to be fitted on the plug in the middle of the cable and the slave on the end. (This is reversed, sensibly, in ATA66/100/133 80-pin cables). Your BIOS may whinge if you don't do it this way when you've got two disks installed - it'll probably not care when you've only got one drive on the cable.[/edit]


Gadget

jyd

A 20gb hard drive....what type of motherboard have you got...ie how old is it...20gb has been around for ages...do you have the sector info...sometimes it is on the label on the drive.

If so in the bios try the user setting which allows you put in the sectors and number of heads.

Also...have you tried the Cable Select CS option on both hard drives

Other possible scenario....:( I had a dodgy drive recently and when it was slaved off another drive the machine would not boot....i presume cos it hung trying to read the info from the dodgy disk....

SouperComputer

assuming the board is half-decent if its a 66fsb (LX) board it may not be able to use a 20Gb. If its a 100FSB (BX or ZX) you stand a better chance.

Make sure you set bios to auto-detect the HD 1st of all, it may have user defined the old one and that will pi$$ bios off when it sees a 20GB!

try a BIOS upgrade also, if applicble.

there is a utility called ezbios that allows newer drives work with older boards that cannot use them, so if thats the problem you might have to go down that avenue.

Dotsie~tmp

Yes its an oldish computer newish drive. The board is a Gateway Tolstoy Intel RC440BX chipset 100FSB. Its set to auto detect on both primary and secondary IDEs. Im pretty sure i tried the WD200 disk on the middle connector as master but i will try again and will also try on CS again. I went to the Gateway site to check BIOS version (4R4CB0XA.15A.0018.P08) and it said it was the latest. Whether i can rely on this i dont know.

Here are the disk specs.

Will have a look at the ezbios. Can anyone explain why it appears in IDE config as master when i say activeate a 3 second access delay, wont respond to fdisk and then has dissapeared from IDE config by next boot?

Inspector Gadget

...I suggest you look at this page:

http://support.wdc.com/dlg/facts.asp

Your HD layout may have to be redetected each time if you didn't go into the BIOS, run an autodetect, and then save your changes...

Gadget

SouperComputer

middle connector = SLAVE!

in IDE the slave is the middle! That board should run the HD though.

the delay only determines how long the PC will wait to boot from that device, set it to 0.

Inspector Gadget

Originally posted by SouperComputer
middle connector = SLAVE!

in IDE the slave is the middle! That board should run the HD though.

the delay only determines how long the PC will wait to boot from that device, set it to 0.

Eh, yes and no.

On ATA66/100 (80 pin) cables, the middle is the slave; on ATA33 (40 pin) cables, the middle is the master.

Taken from http://www.pcguide.com/ref/hdd/if/ide/confCS-c.html:

Unfortunately, regular 40-conductor IDE/ATA cables don't support cable select. (Why this came about I do not know, but I suspect that some bean counter determined they could save five cents on each PC by doing this.) So to use cable select you need a special cable, and these are of course non-standard, making them a special purchase. Also, many people don't understand cable select, nor do they realize it needs a special cable. If you set both drives to "CS" and then use them on a regular (non-cable-select) IDE cable, both drives will configure themselves as "master", causing a configuration conflict.

Making matters worse, the 40-conductor IDE/ATA cable select cables have the "master connector" as the middle device and the "slave connector" as the device at the end of the cable, farthest from the host. For signaling reasons, it's best to put a single drive at the end of a cable, not put it in the middle leaving a "stub" of wire hanging off the end of the channel. But if you do this, that single drive sets itself as a slave with no master, a technically illegal configuration. Worse, suppose you do this, and your hard disk sets itself as a slave, and the system boots from it without problem, as most would. Then, you decide to add a new hard disk. You set it to cable select and attach it to the middle connector. The new drive then becomes the master, and thus moves ahead of the old drive in precedence! The system will try to boot from it instead of your old drive (which some people might want, but many do not.)

To get around this problem, a second type of 40-wire cable select cable was created, the so-called "Y-shaped" cable. On this one, the connector to the system is in the middle, and the slave and master connectors are on the two opposite ends of the cable. This certainly makes things less confusing, but has its own difficulties. For starters, IDE/ATA cables are very limited in length, which means this "Y-shaped" cable was hard to use in large tower systems. All your drives had to be mounted very close to the motherboard or controller card so the cable would reach. And again, the cable was a special item.

As you can see, the traditional way of doing cable select was a total mess, which was why it was never widely adopted. The key reason for this mess was--once again--lack of standardization. I rather expected cable select to eventually wither away. However, when the 80-conductor Ultra DMA cable was introduced, the cable select feature was much improved, changing the potential of this feature. The two key changes were:

• Drive Position: Unlike the old cables, with the 80-conductor cable, the master connector is at the end of the cable, and the slave is in the middle. As I explained above, this is a much more sensible arrangement, since a single drive placed at the end of the cable will be a master, and a second drive added in the middle a slave.
• Universality: All 80-conductor IDE/ATA cables support cable select (or at least, all of the ones that are built to meet the ATA standards). This means there's no confusion over what cables support the feature, and no need for strange "Y-cables" and other non-standard solutions.

HTH
Gadget

SouperComputer

One other thing. 40-pin IDE cables (for ATA33 or lower) expect the master to be fitted on the plug in the middle of the cable and the slave on the end. (This is reversed, sensibly, in ATA66/100/133 80-pin cables). Your BIOS may whinge if you don't do it this way when you've got two disks installed - it'll probably not care when you've only got one drive on the cable.

where did you hear this?

not ideal considering it needs electrical termination! When two drives are used, the master uses the slave drive's controller, hence "slave".

Dotsie~tmp

It was always set to auto detect and yes last connector is the master. Im going to do a re-install of my BIOS and then install Western Digital data tools.

Inspector Gadget

Originally posted by SouperComputer
where did you hear this?

not ideal considering it needs electrical termination! When two drives are used, the master uses the slave drive's controller, hence "slave".

Technically, it does actually get termination at the single drive, it's just that you get stray reflections (so-called "transmission line effects" that stem from the fact that the length of the stray cable is substantially greater than the wavelength of the data signals) from the stray cable segment sited past the drive. These are not a big problem at ATA33 speeds but are pretty significant at faster transfer rates, as is crosstalk, hence the reordering of the connector priorities and the introduction of 80-pin cables (40 of which are just grounds).

Gadget

SouperComputer

has this been your experience gadget? aside from the article

ive never had those problems. masters have worked as a master, add a slave, works as a slave with the master as a master?

same applies to the CS cables? ive used CS quite a few times and many different cables and not had a conflict!

maybe im lucky!

Inspector Gadget

...I have noticed that some systems are considerably fussier than others; however, that's largely a thing of the past, as I haven't noticed it with newer systems very much at all. Maybe I'm exposed to too much old hardware and not enough spangly new stuff :rolleyes:

Gadget

SouperComputer

ditto :rolleyes:

luckily i have a U2 SCSI and 10k Cheetahs!

Inspector Gadget

Dotsie - it just occurred to me that it's possible your copy of FDISK may be old enough that it may not support larger drives, where the BIOS (and the system) might. How big does that HDD report as in the BIOS?

Gadget

Dotsie~tmp

Well ive upgraded to the latest Intel BIOS for the RC440BX board (had to force upgrade from floppy by removing a jumper as normal method was being blocked somehow). While the two now report fdisk still wont recognise the WD200. I then used the WD data tools software which can be used to bypass the BIOS and fdisk to partition and format. While it didnt give a 'No Western Digital hard drive installed' message when i went to install it hung. I think the disk is faulty and is hanging when accessed though not completely unresponsive. It was worth the exercise as i have updated the BIOS which i wanted to do anyway.

I think ill see if electronic-recycling has a 7200rpm 10 or 20 Gig HDD.

Inspector Gadget

Check what size the hard disk says it is in the BIOS, not in FDISK. It'll be in the menus somewhere. Depending on what OS you're using, your copy of FDISK may not be able to detect the full size of the drive. Do this before you try to determine whether the drive is faulty.

Gadget

milltown

Might be a no-brainer but a while back when I was trying to test a couple of hdds in my pc as slaves I mucked around with every jumper configuration available. i.e. master, slave, cable select. In the end I removed the jumper altogether and Bingo! Recognized and booted straight away. (Apart from the SCSI drive that I hadn't noticed! That took about an hour to figure out what was wrong!)

Dotsie~tmp

Its not reporting size just thats its present and still dissapears though it shows as fixed disk: 1 on the new bios boot. Yes i tried the no jumper setting that is (master/single) mode on WD200 HDD.

SouperComputer

yea, could be a buggerd drive, or cable. But that setting the other guy mentioned about the jumpers could also be true.

some WD's have a master, slaver and "single" jumper setting.

Did you try the drive in the 2nd channel?

Gerry

Try the drive in another machine before giving up on it.

Dotsie~tmp

I will