Can't seem to add a Hard Drive (not being recognized)

amo · Sun Jan 08, 2006 2:14 am

Can anyone help me?

I'm trying to add a Seagate 300GB EIDE HD 7200/8MB/ATA-100 to my system. The motherboard is an Award 1998 PCI/PNP 686 with a Maxtor 20GB already in use. I would like to make it a slave or a master drive.

Here is what I have done so far: Set the jumper to master and replaced the Maxtor w/ the Seagate. When I went to boot it only saw it as a 136GB drive and not a 300GB. I have read in the other forums about this and understand that the BIOS need to be updated. Not sure on how to do that. However, i did seem to get it to dos and inserted the Wimdows XP Disk 1, but it failed booting. I then tried to place it in as a slave driver w/ the proper jumper setting and connecting it to the ribbon connection attached to the Maxtor. This slowed the system down and it did not recognize the drive being there in my computer. What are my options? i was thinking about a USB 2.0 3.5" external casing and try to use it that way?

Any suggestions???

Thank you,

AMO

Sun Jan 08, 2006 1:42 pm

Either external or adding a controller card with it's own bios. Without any proper brand/model info of your board there's not much we can say about a bios upgrade for your board, but seeing 1998 probably means a 4.51 Award which has a final limit of 137.6GB and this would mean commercial upgrade needed. Which will cost the same as the controller or the external USB casing...

amo · Mon Jan 09, 2006 12:23 am

Great....I'll try a controller card. Thnak you for the advice. I'll let you know how it works out.

amo · Sat Jan 21, 2006 7:38 pm

OK, I added a RAID controller and it seems to be working. However, I have my 2nd hard disk hooked up as a slave drive. Jumpers and cables are hooked up correctly. When I sign into Wndows XP it only shows my original 20 GB hard drive as my C: drive. If I view the system it shows both hard disks as being there

I'm trying to format the new hard disk so I can set it as the master and do away with the 20 GB one. When I try and boot the new hard disk as the master now, it still tells me that there is a failure and to insert system disk and press enter. I repeat the step and continue to tell me failure. When the controller card utilities show up it regonizes both hard drives as PM and PS which is what I want....Any suggestions