Gotta love scientific, logical explanations like this

What kind of a USB port are you connecting the drive to? USB 1.1 or USB 2.0? Sometimes, this issue occurs if you use a USB 1.1 connector. If the computer does not have a USB 2.0 port, you can...

As mentioned before, buy the biggest capacity drive you can afford at the moment. Prices are crashing on a daily basis and it definitely makes sense to invest in a large capacity drive. If I was in...

Marking this thread as solved.

Have you tried checking the drive on a nother computer? It's possible that some parts of the DVD (specifically the part retaining to copy protection) may have gone bad. If this is the case, the only...

Marking thread as solved.

I'd like to add that disabling SMART is not recommended. SMART monitors your Hard drive for any impending failures and alerts you in advance if it detects anything abnormal with the drive. I strongly...

If FDISK isn't able to delete the partitons, use the debug command to delete the partitions. Boot to DOS mode from the Windows CD and at the prompt, type 'debug' and press enter. You should now see a...

Only make sure your motherboard has the SATA ports. Also, could you elaborate on what serious trouble you ran into when you tried to switch before?

I still think this to be an issue with the DVD drive itself. See iif you can get it replaced, esp if its under warranty.

Try running the 32 Bit Dell diagnostics. When you power on the system and see the Dell logo, press F12 to get to the One Time Boot Menu. Once there, select the last option that says "Boot to Utility...

To ensure that the drive itself is fine, try using the Windows built in CD recording s/w to burn a disc. Insert a blank CD in the drive and open a My Documents window. Right click on any file, point...

It's not possible for a CD ROM drive to read DVDs. CD ROM drives can only read CDs, CD-RW drives can read AND write CDs, DVD ROM drives can read CDs and DVDs, while DVD RW drives can read and write...

Hey all

Ive had an argument with my batch mates. They say that a floppy drive is an IDE drive. I say it is not. Can any of you guys confirm which of us is right? Thanks

try disconnecting the CD drive and see if the problem is resoled. If it is, its the CD drive at fault. Also, see if the drives are detected in the BIOS

Well, it is possible that your other partitions may have gotten corrupted. Try booting to recovery console and try running chkdsk /r from there. If this does not solve your issue, you may need to...

I dont think laptops have SATA drives (may be wrong though). If this is the case, it's possible the lappy's HD may have crashed or a cable may have come loose. Tighten the data and power cables and...

Dude...you opened a new drive? You just voided the warranty for it. If you were having problems with the drive, you could have just taken it back to where you bought it from and got a replacement....

Are your IDE drives being detected in the BIOS? If yes, then the board should be fine and your computer will boot off of the Windows CD. Try the usual checks though. Power and data cables tightly...

remember that formatting will delete all data stored in it.

Your sysptoms indicate that the hard disk itself is faulty. Check it on another computer, and if it doesnt work there, return the HD for a new one.

If I were to guess, your cloning software partitioned the 100 GB disk like the 60GB disk. I'd guess you have to delete all partitions on the disk and start from scratch. Only this time, run Windows...

Wait a sec...are those two disks shown in DM actually ONE disk? How many disks do you have on your computer?

Could you upload a screen shot of what you see in Disk Management? It'll help me diagnose your problem better.

yup. as long as your mobo has the SATA and IDE ports...

what error do you get when you try to install Windows?

Whoops, I didnt see that you'd already tried Disk Management. Does DM show your HD's capacity as 60 GB? if it does, you may need to delete ALL partitions on the disk.

Click Start>run, type diskmgmt.msc and press enter. Under Disk Management, Right-click an unallocated region of a basic disk, and then click New Partition, or right-click free space in an extended...

Weird problem. Did you try clearing the CMOS? This could be an incorrect setting in the BIOS. Resetting the BIOS should help.

youd need to uninstall the game and then reinstall it completely on the external drive...

or, if you have a number of IDE devices, just go in for a PCI IDE add on card. The card provides you with 2-4 IDE channels.

The fact that it recognises CDs but not DVDs points to a problem with the pick-up mechanism. If the laptop is under warranty, send it back to gateway for a replacement. If not, send the drive in for...

Check the power and data connections. You can verify the power cable's plugged in if the drive's LED blinks when you switch on your computer or reboot your computer.

As for the data cable, just...

Connect this new HD on another computer and recreate the partitions from within Windows.

yeah, but id recommend that if you dont use or plan to use floppies, disable the controller from the BIOS and save on some IRQs.

If you mean a DVD, then the answer is No. Howevr, you caninstall games onto internal and external hard drives without any problem.

you mean 3.0 GB/S and 1.5 GB/S right?

Okay. I have a seagate sata drive, but i dont see any jumper pins on it. that means is a sata2 drive? What's the diff between sata 1 and 2?

So what happened when you plugged the SATA 2 disk on your mobo without setting the jumper? It didn't get detected?

Sata 1 had jumpers? I thought sata (1 or 2) didn't have any jumpers...