Another computer question - disk drives

SW 357Mag

I posted awhile back about my dvd burner not working. I got a new one (well, i pulled it out of an older computer) and installed it today. Now neither one of my drives are working. They have power and will open and close, but they dont read the disks. They don't even show up under "My Computer". It's like they aren't even there.

I tried a different IDE cable and that didn't change anything. The top drive worked fine until I tried changing the second drive out. Now neither does anything. What could I have done to make the top one stop working?

I'm lost. Any help?

scrumpyjack

Try setting the drive you just installed to "slave" and make sure it is on the "slave" connection of your IDE ribbon cable. If you have them both set to "master" they won't work.

SW 357Mag

I had them both set on slave. Good call.

But, they still dont work. I set one to master and one to slave.

[:(!]

SW 357Mag

This is driving me wacky. I'm about to throw the damn computer.

buschmaster

if the computer sees them in BIOS, it's not a connection problem, it's a windows problem.

guntech59

quote:Originally posted by SW 357Mag
This is driving me wacky. I'm about to throw the damn computer.


Use a gun, it takes less energy.

SW 357Mag

quote:Originally posted by buschmaster
if the computer sees them in BIOS, it's not a connection problem, it's a windows problem.


How do I know if it sees them in BIOS?

WinM70

Make sure the drive you have set as master is on the last connector on the ribbon cable and the slave is on the conector located closer to the motherboard connector.
Your bios should already see the drive as there was already one set up in the system before, if not then the system would halt and make you configure the bios before Windows even started to load.
Also sometimes if a person is not carefull when removing the connector and pulls on the cable it can break the connection, and the ribbon cable will need to be replaced.

slipgate

Set them both to C/S or cable select. Then go into your bios - F2 or f10 or something like that when it boots and see if it is detecting them.

BTW: You can only have 4 IDE devices, 2 on each ribbon, so if you have 3 hard drives or some other combination that adds up to over 4, you need to lose one (or more).

v35

The jumpers on those drives have to agree with how they are being used i.e. master has to be jumpered as master and slave has to be jumpered as slave. Set your BIOS to recognize the drives.

SW 357Mag

Well I dont know what the hell. I went to Add hardware just to see what would happen, and it found the disk drive that I had already been using. The top drive. Now it works. Why adding another drive would cause Windows not see one that has been there all along, I haven't a clue. Oh well, it's working. It's the important one anyway.

The new burner still didnt work so I just said to hell with it and took it back out. It's an emachines burner so it's hard to tell what kind of stupid software it has. I'll just pick up a cheap one on newegg or tiger.

Thanks for the help guys.