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IDE erorr

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by baxt76

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I'll try put this as shortly as pos, i'm a bit new to this. I got given three computers from an office clean out, not the newest and only one had a bad case. So I'm left with the parts from three computers. I've built one good working one (sort of). this is where my prob lies, I'm receiving an error message saying;- IDE DRIVES INSTALLATION ERORR- for best reliability & performance, please change the stand alone slave drive to master, system halt...
The computer freezes at this point, these words are in blood red and have squiggly highlight lines at either end. I have checked every cable and tried booting from a new OS disc, the BIOS is inn full working order and all boot sequences are set right.
I've replaced pritty much every cable and tried two hard drives.
Has anyone come across this or know anything about it? please help!

7 replies

by thumbsup2

Either you've gotten a hold of a cable which will only allow the master drive to be connected to one connector, usually the end, or your drive is jumpered as a slave instead of a master.

In the BIOS, where does the HDD show? Is it showing as a master there?

by oh smeg

Every IDE Drive either HDD or Optical has a 2 Row Header Strip on it with a Plastic Covered coper joiner in it. This is used to Short out 2 of the generally 6 pins to set the Drive to either Master, Slave or Cable Select.

You need to set the HDD to Master and possibly the Optical Drive if it is on a different Data Lead and plug them both into the end connector furriest away from the M'Board.

You should also look at the Data Cables as well here if they have 4 wires in then they are suitable for Optical Drives or a Secondary IDE Chanel where as the ones with 80 wires should always be used on the Primary IDE Chanel and are the type that work with the Cable Select Option.

Every IDE Drive has the Jumper Settings listed either on the sticker on the top of the drive or sometimes on a separate sticker either on the end of the HDD above the Jumper pins or on the underside of the drive.

The Optical Drives have this 6 Pin set on the back to the right of the Data Cable when viewing from the front. These are labeled generally by the Words Master, Slave and CS or Cable Select stamped into the metal cover either on the back of the drive or on the top of the drive above the Jumper Pins.

While you can use a 80 Wire IDE Lead with both Chanel's the Optical Drives will not be able to make the full use of the Higher Speed Data Transfers as they are slower than a HDD.

Col

by baxt76

cant believe i didnt think about the jumpers on the back of the optical drive, what a numpty. its up n running :-)

by baxt76

Sorry m8, dont understand the question?

by oh smeg

That reads 4 Wire instead of 40 Wire.

Col

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