Ad:

Storage Discussion Thread
Marked Solved
Views: 57139

Page 1
2
Next

You are currently viewing page 1 of this multi-page discussion thread

Jul 1st, 2004

"primary drive 1 not found"

Expand Post »

I have a dell 8300, XP, and i tried to install a new 120gb hard drive as my master and make my original 60gb as a slave. I wanted to image my original, put it on my new one so I can format my original and start adding stuff i wanted to save on my original, like a backup and run the computer off the new one because it was faster. I noticed that the boot process was much slower, i'm guessing it was because it was uploading the OS from my slave(original).

So i put the original one back and when i start my computer, the Bios checking takes longer and i get a message that says:

"primary drive 1 not found"

My boot sequence is diskette, primary drive, cd. So i guess its my hard drive.

Then it askes me to press F1 to continue or F2 to go to setup utility. How do i solve this problem?

Similar Threads

"primary drive 0 not found" in Storage
Noises, "Primary Drive 1 Not Found" in Storage

casba

Reputation Points: 10

Solved Threads: 0

Newbie Poster

Offline

5 posts
since Jul 2004

Permalink

Jul 2nd, 2004

Re: "primary drive 1 not found" HELP!!!

OK, I'm curious. How DO you solve the problem?

Do you press F1 and everthing works OK? Do you press F2 and have to make changes in BIOS Setup to continue? Do you get stuck at this point and can't proceed?

If you're getting stuck, check that you've configured the drives correctly. Primary drive - Jumper set to 'Master', drive attached to end connector of primary IDE cable. Secondary drive - jumper set to 'Slave', drive attached to middle connector of primary IDE cable

And don't forget to change everything back over if you swap them.

Catweazle

Team Colleague

Reputation Points: 229

Solved Threads: 149

Grandad

Offline

3,826 posts
since Mar 2004

Permalink

Jul 2nd, 2004

Re: "primary drive 1 not found" HELP!!!

I did, I set the jumper back to master and the hard drive on end the connector of the ribbon cable, just like how i found it. I press F1 and it just continues like normal but performance is a little slower. When i press F2 it goes to the cmos settings and its back to the original settings.

I'm going to check it again when I go home, but I didn't see a difference in the cmos settings.

casba

Reputation Points: 10

Solved Threads: 0

Newbie Poster

Offline

5 posts
since Jul 2004

Permalink

Jul 2nd, 2004

Re: "primary drive 1 not found" HELP!!!

Perhaps the CMOS battery is dead or dying? sounds likely to me. I'd replace it to see if that fixes things. They don't cost much

Catweazle

Team Colleague

Reputation Points: 229

Solved Threads: 149

Grandad

Offline

3,826 posts
since Mar 2004

Permalink

Jul 2nd, 2004

Re: "primary drive 1 not found"

Dell systems work better on Cable select. Try setting it like that, with the master drive on the black connector, and the slave drive on the grey connector. It should work out like that. After you've done that, go into your BIOS, and light up the NumLock, CapsLock, and ScrollLock lights on your keyboard. Hold <Alt>+F, then hit <Alt>+E. After it stops beeping, hit <Alt>+B, and this will restart your system. That procedure sets your BIOS back to defaults, and it should force the system to redetect all of the IDE drives.

alc6379

Team Colleague

Reputation Points: 186

Solved Threads: 147

Cookie... That's it

Offline

2,519 posts
since Dec 2003

Permalink

Jul 2nd, 2004

Re: "primary drive 1 not found"

Do you guys get paid for helping people out? you should, you guys are good. Thanks a lot.

casba

Reputation Points: 10

Solved Threads: 0

Newbie Poster

Offline

5 posts
since Jul 2004

Permalink

Aug 12th, 2004

Re: "primary drive 1 not found"

I had the same problem on an out of the box Dell 4600c. I googled the error (primary drive 0 not found), and many people thought that the motherboard was fried. Unfortunately, almost all the posts were concerning Dells

. I thought that maybe the CMOS battery was dead so i pulled it out. On the board, a little plus sign was staring up at me and i looked at the battery. A little plus sign was staring at me there as well. So I flipped over the battery so the plus signs matched up (i cant believe dell installed a battery upside down!). It worked fine after that.

tal9

Reputation Points: 10

Solved Threads: 1

Newbie Poster

Offline

1 posts
since Aug 2004

Permalink

Aug 12th, 2004

Re: "primary drive 1 not found"

Quote originally posted by tal9 ...

I had the same problem on an out of the box Dell 4600c. I googled the error (primary drive 0 not found), and many people thought that the motherboard was fried. Unfortunately, almost all the posts were concerning Dells . I thought that maybe the CMOS battery was dead so i pulled it out. On the board, a little plus sign was staring up at me and i looked at the battery. A little plus sign was staring at me there as well. So I flipped over the battery so the plus signs matched up (i cant believe dell installed a battery upside down!). It worked fine after that.

Well, that's interesting that the battery would be installed upside down.

You know what? Not trying to make excuses for anyone, but it is pretty easy to get those battery sides confused...

alc6379

Team Colleague

Reputation Points: 186

Solved Threads: 147

Cookie... That's it

Offline

2,519 posts
since Dec 2003

Permalink

Oct 19th, 2006

Re: "primary drive 1 not found"

Another Dell with some settings garbled during a lightning strike. I had similar issue with the primary drive not found and XP Home crashing during install. I did the Alt+f, Alt+e, Alt+b and was able to continue. Thanks for the help. The Dell tech certified it as junk and the family replaced it through insurance. So I just picked up a 2.8GHz P4 for nothing!!!!:cheesy:

mudengineer

Reputation Points: 10

Solved Threads: 1

Newbie Poster

Offline

1 posts
since Oct 2006

Permalink

Mar 9th, 2007

Re: "primary drive 1 not found"

Found this old thread via Google. The alt+f, alt+e, alt+b trick saved me. Gotta love the internet!

jupiter1977

Reputation Points: 10

Solved Threads: 1

Newbie Poster

Offline

1 posts
since Mar 2007

Page 1
2
Next

This thread is solved

Either the thread starter or a moderator has marked this thread as solved. You can most likely trust the responses and answers given. There is most likely no reason for any further responses to be posted here. If you have a related question, please start a new thread in this forum instead.

This thread is more than three months old

No one has posted to this discussion for at least three months. Please let old threads die and do not reply to them unless you feel you have something new and valuable to contribute that absolutely must be added to make the discussion complete. Otherwise, please start a new thread in this forum instead.

Previous Thread in Storage Forum Timeline: There has been a sharing violation.

Next Thread in Storage Forum Timeline: usb data recovery

DaniWeb Message

Cancel Changes

User Name
Password