How Do I Connect A Second Hard-Disc?

Andi

Hello Folks!

Well, here I am again with my latest computer problem (I have a theory ... the people who invented the PC are in a conspiracy with the makers of headache pills). I digress ...

I recently bought a new 40-GB hard-disc to upgrade my pathetic old 4-GB one. Now, I didn't want to remove the old one, as I'd lose all the data that I need to keep, but the guy in the shop said I could just slave the new one to the old. I thought slavery had been abolished yonks ago, but he assured me this was both possible and legal. So, after he'd set the jumpers for me (whatever the heck THEY were), I left the shop with his instructions ringing in my ears - unfortunately, the staff at this place don't speak English, just an incomprehensible dialect of technobabble.

OK, let me explain the set up I've got at the moment, and what I did. There's a 3-plug ribbon cable connecting the CD-drive to the old hard-drive, and from there to the motherboard. I removed the plug from the old hard-drive (leaving CD and motherboard still connected), then took a new 3-plug cable and connected the old and new hard-drives together, with the third plug going to the motherboard.

After re-booting I found that the PC recognized I'd got a new hard-disc fitted (this from Programme Manager). It said the device was working correctly, but it hadn't assigned it a drive letter Even worse, it wouldn't let me assign a letter manually (ie; assignment box greyed out) :bawling: It also did something to Windows, so that it wouldn't shut down properly, so I had to perform a manual negative electromagnetic flux induction operation (ie; I shut the damn thing off!) Re-setting the ribbon cables back the way they were cured the Windows problem, but of course, I still had no new hard disc.

I went back to the shop to ask advice, which was freely given, but induced a major migraine attack and left me none the wiser. I'm sure they'd willingly fit the thing for me (in exchange for a large wad of cash, no doubt), but then I remembered all the nice people on Short Media - love & cuddles all round

As usual, please excuse my ignorance. I'm sure some of you are rolling on the floor with laughter right now (at least, I HOPE it's with laughter) at my pathetic mistakes - but hey, at least I'm keeping you amused on a dark autumn night (back to that 'rolling around on the floor' thing). So, can anyone see what I did wrong and explain the right thing to do (preferably in easily inderstood language)?

Many thanks, 'Shorties' - I know you won't let me down (grovel, bow, scrape).

Thrax

Don't follow the jumper settings on this diagram, as your hard drive will probably employ its own jumper configuration, however these are jumpers:



Little metal slivers encased in plastic that are placed over sets of pins to complete a circuit. They can reset BIOS, set slave or master on a hard drive, select the default bus speed of a motherboard, etcetera. In this case, you're going to want to let us know what HDDs (both) you have so we can track down the proper config for jumpers!

Then what we'll do is set the 4GB to master, and the 40GB to slave and let windows operate as normal. Then we'll use the windows disk manager (Start > settings > control panel > administrative tools > computer management > disk manager) to format your 40GB drive so Windows can use it and apply a drive letter to it.

I don't know if you know the difference between a primary and secondary hard drive chain, but we'll set your HDs up on the primary chain (with one ribbon cable), and your CDROM(s) up on another cable on the secondary chain.

edcentric

Hold everything.
If your single ribbon cable is already connected to your old hdd and your cd, then you can't connect another drive to it.
On the motherboard right next to where that cable connects should be an unused connector (identical).
You need another cable.
You can connect your cd directly to the other connector with the new cable.
Then you put both hdd on the original cable as master and slave.

Thrax

Thrax wrote:

I don't know if you know the difference between a primary and secondary hard drive chain, but we'll set your HDs up on the primary chain (with one ribbon cable), and your CDROM(s) up on another cable on the secondary chain.

madmat

When you move the CD-ROM to the other cable make certain it's set to master with it's jumper as well or the operating system might not see it...just thought you should know that bit because generally when it's set up with the CD-ROM on the same cable as the HDD the CD will be set to slave unless the dreaded CS (cable select) setting is used, then the hardware is supposed to sort itself out which may or may not happen.

Andi

Many thanks to those who replied!

Thrax ... the makes/models of my hard discs are as follows:-

4GB: Samsung SV0432A
40GB: Maxtor Diamond Max Plus 8 ATA/133

That's about all I can tell you about them (other than, they're black, they're hard and they live inside my PC).

I'm a little worried about all this talk of setting jumpers This is because the guy in the shop is supposed to have set them on the new disc, but mostly because if there's any setting to be done it'll be 'moi' who'll have to do it BTW; I'm running on Win98 SE, and I don't have that 'admin' function in my control panel (unless there's another way to get there on '98?)

Also, I assume you've read the comments from the other posters ... ???

Just for the hell of it today, I tried connecting the drives up as you suggested (ie; CD-ROM to Secondary IDE Connector; both hard drives connected in series to Primary IDE Connector). No joy, I'm afraid. Windows just told me the system disc was missing. I tried a boot-up disc in the floppy drive, but after spewing a load of technobabble on screen, it just sat there fat, dumb and happy (and not booting).

So, there we have it, folks. Where do we go from here?

Tex

You guys Windows recognized the drive fine he just needs to format the disk the first time the way it was plugged in? With someone thats obviously unsure of the setup of this he is gonna have trouble with the jumpers and stuff. I say we let him plug it back up just like he had it. But if the guy setup the drive jumpers on the new one and has told him he could just slave it that should work fine but.... The old drive MUST be on the end connector on the cable as its the master and the slave is on the middle one.

What Operating system are you running? With a 4mb disk I assume win98?

You can't just assign a drive letter. The drive letter is assigned by formating the disk.

Get it hooked up where your running again and we can go from there. If you had to carry both drives back into the shop they could verify the jumper settings and show you where they should be plugged into the cable.

Tex

Andi

Dear 'Shorties'

One of the great strengths of this site is the wealth of knowledge and experience that a newbie like me can draw on. Unfortunately, these same qualities can be its greatest drawback. Ask 6,000 people the best way to change a lightbulb and you'll get 6,000 opinions. Inevitably, there will be differences in these opinions; egos will get bruised and some will lose interest in the problem .... such is life

Anyhow, for anyone who's still reading these posts, I managed to get the new disk installed and running. If you're new(ish) to computers and facing the same task as I was, I'd recommend going to - www.maxtor.com - where you'll find a very clear and informative 'how to' section on installing hard drives. This gives you all the info' you'll need on setting jumpers (a breeze) and formating the new disk. If the new one's a Maxtor disk you can even download free software that painlessly takes care of formating and partitioning same (and yes, the site explains what all this jargon means).

Thanks to all postees for their input

Till next time there's a problem (and with computers, there's ALWAYS a next time .... )