HD help needed

[FriskyTanuki]

I got a Seagate 80 GB HD to add more room for me to save stuff on my PC. My PC is a Dell that opens up like a book. I watched the video on the included disc to see how to do this, and I did it as closely as I could. I screwed on the green breackets in my dell to allow it to be put in. I hooked up the interface cable like it showed to make the old one the master and the new one the slave drive. I followed the installation guide and moved the jumper to the first pair on the master drive and removed the jumper from the slave drive. I also made sure the power cables were plugged into both.

I closed it up and made sure that I had everything the way that I understood it was supposed to be. What could I have done wrong and how can I get it to work again?

[epobirs]

How does it fail? Does it not show the drive at all or is it only visible from Drive Management? (This is contingent on what OS you're running.)

Are you sure the power conenctor to the new drive is well seated? Have you checked the BIOS to see if it thinks there is two drives in the machine?

Have you tried setting up the new drive as master while the other drive is disconnected, just to see if the new driv eis recognized?

[FriskyTanuki]

Here's what it says:

Primary hard disk drive 0 not found
Primary hard disk drive 1 not found
Strike the F1 key to continue, F2 to run the setup utility

I have Windows XP running.

I'll try the last thing and let you know what happens.

[epobirs]

You possible have a bad cable or the cable inserted incorrectly. (This is why I greatly prefer assymetrical sockets.) On some systems this can prevent booting entirely.

Get back to the point where the original drive works correctly. Try conencting the drive to the secondary controller with a separate cable to see if it behaves properly there. Son't worry about disconnecting your optical drives. Those can be reconnected after this is dealt with. The health of the new drive needs to be established so you can be sure you aren't wasting your time.

[FriskyTanuki]

Okay, I got it back to its original state before I even touched it to put in the new HD. The only thing I'm worried is with the interface cable, it looks like it would be impossible to get the second drive in with just this cable. I have the one that came with the new drive, but I'd like to not have to change much besides the drive. If you want a picture of the inside so youcould help me better, I have a digital camera. Just say so if you want it.

[FriskyTanuki]

I've got the HD in it's slot below the old drive and I'm looking to put the interface cable in. I want the black connector in the master drive and the gray connector in the slave drive, right? Should I use the new interface cable inplace of the original one? It doesn't look like it'll fit that way with the original cable, maybe if I switched the drives. Would that work?

Also, do the power connectors go? One says P3 and the other says P5.

[FriskyTanuki]

any help?

[epobirs]

You may want to try the cable that came with the drive, especially if it's any longer. The cable in PCs are often too short for expansion because it lets them shave a few pennies.

If it's a standard IDE cable it shouldn't matter which connector goes to which drive. The jumper settings are for that. One thing to note also is whether the cable is designed so it can only go one way. That saves a lot of trouble.

Any of the power connectors with the appropriate plug will serve. (Assuming no defects in that area but it's rare.)

[FriskyTanuki]

I got it to recognize both drives, but it's still not booting up. It's just says to strike F1 to retry boot and F2 for the setup utility. What do I need to change on the setup utility for it to go back to normal?

[FriskyTanuki]

What should I do?

[FriskyTanuki]

Can anyone help me out?

[FriskyTanuki]

bump

[FriskyTanuki]

Got it working, thanks for the help.