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Ultra 66 2nd Hardrive

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8 replies

by ahowley

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I installed a second HD. My current HD has Ultra 66 and for awhile I had no problem with 2hard drives. Mu PC automatically detected the 2nd HD. After reininstalling Windows 98 then XP, the 2nd HD causes problems. Sometimes my PC boots successfully, then other times, it will say "detecting operaring system" and then "no operating system found." I know XP, the Ultra 66 drivers are native, so I don't know what the problem is? I disconnect the slave HD cable (HD #2 is setup for automatic select) and the PC boots fine.

8 replies

by harold.smit

I think your problem lies in the cable select mode, Look for the jumper settings on both HDD, select the one with the OS as Master and the other one as slave, or put is in as your secondary master, you didn't mention any CD rom drives, so you probably only have one, put that one as a secondary slave.
cheers

by the gardener

its looking for the OS on the other HD and cant find it is the reason for the report. check for and disable cable select in the bios, make sure the drive with the OS is on the 0/master connection (the ide cable end connector)and put the added drive on that same cable as the slave with the proper jumper selection and no cas jumpers on any of them (cable select).
get scott mullers book at www.upgradingandrepairingpcs.com

by the gardener

BTW do your OS installing without the second drive being connected and make sure it reboots ok several times, then reinstall the extra hard drive and if you have to replace the second HD's master boot record to reflect its position. Partition magic will do it for you or you can use the /mbr switch with fdisk
you might want to get partition magic for your use go to http://kickme.to/fosi for a downloadable working version.
(i didnt tell you that)

by the gardener

oh yes i just remembered, win 98 only supports the fat file system, XP will support either the fat or the NTFS file system ( how the hard drive is setup) and one is not compatible with the other
partitionmagic can change them one to the other.
didyou install 98 with both drives installed (fat) and when you did the XP upgrade elect to use the NTFS file system?

by ahowley

Tried this already and did not work. Sometimes the PC finds the 2nd HD fine, then other times all it says is: detecting HD, no OS found"

by ozhuntsman

You say HD#2 is set for automatic. To be specific if its set to "Cable Select", many PC's won't correctly identify the drive consistantly.
This is a BIOS defect I believe. To fix this problem:
Set the #2 drive to either the Slave setting if its on the (2nd plug)same cable as the old drive (you will only have 1 HDD cable in this configuration)
Or set it to Master if its connected to the 2nd controller socket on the motherboard. In this case, you will have 2 cables for your installed HDD's. It doesn't matter which connector you use on a HDD cable.
Your CDROM will also be on one of these cables. It may already be configured as a Master or a Slave, depending on which controller it was configured for.
I prefer to configure my CDROM as a slave to my 2nd HDD which provides faster access with the "C" drive on controller #1.
Of course the CDROM could also be a MAster on the 2nd controller, for faster access, if only 1 HDD is installed.
In conclusion; don't use Cable Select as the HDD option setting.

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