What could be wrong with my hardrive

JackKelly

Ok im just after taking the hardrive from the family pc and putting it into my new pc as a slave. Now, after i was finished with it, i took it back to the family pc, put it in as a primary drive and turned it on....... no use. It say something like "Primary Harddrive not detected, press F1 to restart or F2 to continue".

Is this a problem with the jumpers or something? Maybe that its set as a slave at the moment?Im using the same cables as before? I was thinking of sticking it in as the slave to the secondary CD?

Any ideas? I really hope i havent just ****ed the hardrive.

uch

Did you change the Jumper configuration ?
Are you using the same connector on the IDE cable ?
Is the IDE Cable connected tightly to the Board ?

BKtje

try sticking it in the other pc again just to check that it works. If it does then recheck cables (including power!!) and jumper settings.

JackKelly

No i didn't touch the actual jumpers themselves. The IDE connectors havent touched on the family PC. I literally took it out, left the PC there, than tried to put it back in later.
Yeah, i'll check it in the new PC.(i had to get off to work!)

BKtje

So you took it out of your first machine (where it was a primary device) and stuck it into your second machine( where it was a slave) without changing any jumpers? Didn't know that was possible unless your using cable select.

Try setting the jumpers to Primary device (very easy to do, just look at the hard drives case for settings or at the jumpers themselevs for some writing)

JackKelly

This is how it was when i put it in the new pc. I haven't really explained properly
NEW PC:

Primary Master-Normal Hardrive
Primary Slave - Hardrive from old pc
Secondary Master- CD
Secondary Slave- empty

As you can see my new PC doesnt have the CD under primary slave like some.

Technically, the old pc should just think that i have taken out the hd for a while.unless the new pc wrote something to it, telling it that it was now a slave?if thats possible?

As i said, i haven't touched any jumpers


<EDIT> how sturdy are Hardrives?What would it take to break one!?</EDIT>

mooman_00

Afaik its bad to put your cd drive as a slave drive to your hard drive as one slows the other down.

The jumpers tell the computer whether the harddrive is a slave drive or not so your computer hasn't wrote something to your harddrive telling it its a slave.

As B-K-Dzr said its strange that you were able to put the harddrive staight into your other comp without changing the jumpers as these have to be changed when making a harddrive a slave drive. Also as B-K-Dzr said just try to change the jumpers to primary or if its already set to primary set it to cable select.

If your cd drive is on the same cable as the harddrive try putting it on a seperate cable and rebooting.

padraigmyers

Sounds like all your drives are set on cable select. To explain: a harddrive can be set
as either a master or slave explicidly by setting the jumper at the back of the drive,
the jumper can be set to "master", "slave" or "cable select", in cable select
configuration it depends on which connecter on the IDE cable that you plug into as to
whether it becomes a slave or a master, is it possible that you have plugged the
hard drive into the other connector on the primary cable on you old PC, this may be
your problem.

JackKelly

ok, i'll try that. It sounds like that is the problem. Im hoping i haen't just broke it.it did take a few knocks!Thanks a mil.

BKtje

Cable select needs a special cable to work tho (which are fairly rare). Without a special cable it will automatically be given primary status which can **** it up a bit with two things trying to be primary. Let us know how u get on tho

JackKelly

i checked it on my new pc and its ok, thank god.
I scandisked it and defreaged it just incase.
I tryed it again in the old pc exept this time i put it in the primary slave under the CD, and i got a bit further. Now it just says cannot read from drive.
I think though, i know whats wrong. Before i took it out of the new pc i partitioned my new drive. all the drive letters got mixed about and maybe (although i didn't think it could) the old HD took a new drive letter to compensate. I thought that the HD just went back to C:/ automatically-this might'nt be happening because i never changed the jumpers in the first place?This might not even possible but it sounds like it makes sense

BKtje

Your operating system assigns drive letters..it shouldnt matter what it gives them. (think it gives c to the active partition).

I'm not sure what cannot read from drive means in your case.
Usually i would have thought that the file system was incompatible with the OS or something but that doesnt make sense in this case.

When does it give this error?

JackKelly

the os's are the same.
it boots the bios screen, and then the error comes up.
it basically doesn't pick up the hard drive.So basically, i can't even get to the windows screen.

b3t4

It may just be that the bios doesn't automatically pick up the harddrive. This happens on my computer. I have to go into the bios to get it to recognise any new harddrives I've put on.

Try going into the Bios. It shouldn't be that hard to get the Bios to pick up the harddrive.


Hope that helps,
A.

JackKelly

nah that doesn't work either.
ive gone through all the settings in the bios. even the boot up sequence.
Im thinking that maybe the ide cable is wrecked, as its now saying "cannot read drive" or whatever. I'll try a new cable

BKtje

Did you touch the jumpers at all?
It wont recognise it at all if you have the wrong jumper setting on. ie slave drive set to primary...tho this normally means neither primary is seen. Primary devices should be put at the end of the ide cable incase its not there.
Try removing all other ide devices and just leave the harddrive on. Any difference?

mooman_00

Also put the cd rom drive on a different cable as this is probably set to primary, causing your hard drive to go undetected.

JackKelly

my cd is on secondary master.
i've tryed it on all jumpers on each ide cable port.
the weird thing is that it does work-as ive checked it on the other pc

b3t4

When you look at the IDE devices section of the BIOS does it show up the harddrive, it's size and say it's the primary slave??

or does it indicate anywhere (which it should do) what the primary Drive is??

A.

JackKelly

i brought it into the i.t. guys where i work. It looks like it was converted to HPFS (never had heard of it before). So with the help of a converter floppy disk, its being fixed as i speak.
weird problem.thanks for the help anyway

BKtje

HPFS? Someone must have converted it as it doesnt do it by itself.

This is quite an old file structure. Around the same time (or just after) FAT iirc.