Weird Harddrive Problem!!!!!

[ja83]

hello,

I have a weird HDD problem. My plan was to transfer data from one of my old HDDs to my new HDD. BUt when setting them up in the computer, I accidentally set both HDDs as masters on the same IDE cable. The computer booted up fine, but it only showed one drive in the control panel. I got an error message saying something about one of the HDDs. I was like "***". I shut down then I take both drives out and now I just try to boot from my original drive and guess what? It hangs on the PCI listing device screen, where is says "Verifying DMI Pool Data." So anyways, I called this computer tech guy and told him my problem. He said that setting both HDD to master on same IDE cable could possibly mess one or both of the HDDs up. Well my old HDD boots up fine. It's my newer original one that doesn't work. But the weird part is that when I tested it at my friend's house it booted and worked fine on his computer. And all of my old files were there. It seems as though the HDD refuses to boot on my system.
btw, it's a Maxtor 40GB drive, and recently I couldn't live without a computer so I just went out and bought a Maxtor 80GB.

What could possibly be the problem with that 40GB HDD?

[morriswindgate]

Put both drive in the computer but set the jumpers to cable select and plug the master drive into the end of the IDE cable and the slave drive into the middle plug. Start the computer and enter the BIOS setup and redetect the hard drives. F10 and save the setting and proceed with the boot.

[ja83]

Why must I use CS? I have one drive set to master, can I just set the 40GB "trouble drive" to slave?

[mike breck]

Hi ja83,

If you are using an 80 wire cable with the blue, gray, and black connectors, then it can reduce possible errors by jumpering both HDs to CS.

Blue to mobo, gray for Slave, Black for Master Drive.

With this cable, you jumper both drives to CS because it is their position on the cable (gray for slave and black for Master) which determines the Master/Slave relationship and NOT the jumpers on the Drives.

If you still have problems with "Verifying DMI", then try Clearing the CMOS via the jumper on the mobo according to the manual or alternatively (this clears the CMOS as well) just remove the mobo battery for a minute and then put it back in. Then go into the BIOS and make sure your Hardware is detected properly.

HTH

[Cricket]

Hi ja83,

Do both hard drives have an OS installed on them? This isn't a problem, I'm just asking.

Have you tried setting up the drives on separate IDE channels?

Have you tried using the CS (cable select) jumper setting as suggested? If you're using the 80 wire ATA66/100/133 IDE cable it's best to set the drive jumpers to CS as that's what the 80 wire cable was designed to use...not the master/slave jumper settings. If you're using the older 40 wire ATA33 IDE cable, then you would use the master/slave jumper settings.

Is your original hard drive a Maxtor too?

When the 40GB Maxtor is in the system, try booting into Safe Mode (hold the Shift key after the first boot screen changes to the second boot screen). If your system boots to Safe Mode, you might have a driver problem. Try going into Device Manager and remove all the hardware device entries and reboot to normal Windows.

Cricket

[ja83]

Hey guys,

Thanks for trying to help me out! They are both maxtor HDDs with windows 98 loaded on to them. I will try your suggestions and see what happens? Also, could someone clarify another question I had? I heard somewhere that when transfering data from one HDD to another it's not good to have them on the same IDE channel or cable or something like that? Is this true?

[RobH]

When I add a HDD and want to transfer over the information,I will place a drive on Primary and one on secondary IDE then use Ghost.Once the information is transfered,CS is the way to go.For some reason (maybe bad habit)I have just found it easier to unplug the CDROM and throw the ide cable over to the new drive,till it is ghosted.

[ktkendall]

It will definately be quicker on seperate IDE channels, and just my opinion probably more reliable too.