I am having trouble installing a second hard drive as a slave. They are IDE, originally there were two hard drives, however i have purchased a new hard drive to replace the old slave hard drive. I set the new hard drive jumper setting to slave, however when i do this no hard drive is deteced at bios, not even the original one. when i try the new hard drive as the master hard drive, still nothing is detected. the older hard drives had 8 pins (or 9 pins im not sure there is one to the side by itself) in the jumper block. Where as the new one has 10. Reading another thread on this site it said that there is no compatibility problem, so how can i fix this? Thanks.

Recommended Answers

All 13 Replies

the name of the hdd involved would have been nice.
anyway ,the new drive is brand new i assume ,has it been formated ,did it come with hdd utilities disk to help you set it up.

It did not come with any utilizies. So i need to format it before it can detect it?
Western Digital and im not sure the exact type but from what i can read it says WD Cavier SE WD3200AAJB 320 gig

yeah i do believe it needs to be formatted ,but you also have problem starting computer with it installed ,try installing it a master on the secondary ide channel ,were the cdrom is , i will post a link to software utility for the drive ,what OS is install on your main drive .
http://support.wdc.com/download/index.asp?cxml=n&pid=3&swid=1

i have windows xp proffesional

which of them utilities do i require.

i have windows xp proffesional

which of them utilities do i require.

the recommended one is the windows version ,it will run from the winxp you have if you can get the computer too boot with both drives installed / if you can't just hook the drive as master on the primary ide ,and get the dos version ,either floppy disk or cdrom version

i did the boot cd of it and when i went to setup the harddrive it couldnt find any hard drives to setup

i did the boot cd of it and when i went to setup the harddrive it couldnt find any hard drives to setup

without seeing you have the jumper's right there isn't much i can say except maybe you got a bad hdd!

well according to the label on the hard drive the jumper is right, unless because the other hard drives have less jumper pins, does that affect it?

well according to the label on the hard drive the jumper is right, unless because the other hard drives have less jumper pins, does that affect it?

no ,if you had a master and a slave drive all ready ,then it should be just a matter of making sure the new drive is set to slave and hooked to same cable as old slave drive and it should have worked ,
good nite ,Im going to lala land

yes thats why i am confused, if i put the old drive back on it works fine still, but as soon a i put the new one on, neither drive can be found, which leads me to beleive that the new one is set to master or something which is creating confusiion. But ive got it set to wat it says and ive tried changing the jumper around but nothing works.

ive just realised why i think its not working. when i turn the computer on with the new hard drive, the hard drive isnt turning on. its not making any noises or vibrating or any signs of it being on, ive tried multiple power cords and cant seem to get it on

ok ive fianlly got it working. like i said before it wasnt vibrating so that means it wasnt turned on. So i kept trying different power cords and one of the power cords that are longer at the end, i tried that, pished it in really hard and wiggled it around until the hard drive got power and turned on, must be a bit faulty or something, but it works, autodetected it and now im gonna format it and im done. thanks caperjack for the help i really appreciate it, sorry for wasting ya time though over such a simple mistake i made

ok ive fianlly got it working. like i said before it wasnt vibrating so that means it wasnt turned on. So i kept trying different power cords and one of the power cords that are longer at the end, i tried that, pished it in really hard and wiggled it around until the hard drive got power and turned on, must be a bit faulty or something, but it works, autodetected it and now im gonna format it and im done. thanks caperjack for the help i really appreciate it, sorry for wasting ya time though over such a simple mistake i made

Your welcome,not wasting my time,most computer problem are simple ,after the fact! good luck

Be a part of the DaniWeb community

We're a friendly, industry-focused community of developers, IT pros, digital marketers, and technology enthusiasts meeting, networking, learning, and sharing knowledge.