Older hard drive doesn't boot on new PC

[Daboo]

I have been doing some trouble shooting on a new PC build and in the process I have tried using an old WD 4 GB hard drive that has Win98 installed (taken from a PII era computer). This hard drive will boot from another PC of that era but when I try to test it on this new system with an Asus P4B533-v mobo, it's like the BIOS takes too long to recognize it so it can't boot. When entering the BIOS I can see it eventually (about a minute) gets the specs right on this hard drive, but at least at boot up no hard drive is even detected by the BIOS. In contrast, a new unformatted Maxtor (40 GB) drive is immediately recognized at boot up.

I have all jumpers set correctly and cables are good so - does anyone know why this older hard drive is giving this newer system fits?

[gbirke]

Do you have the jumper on master, if so and it is the only HD try removing the jumper completely. I think it is WD that works that way.

[glc]

Exactly. WD drives have 3 jumper settings - master, slave, and cable select. Master is only used when there is a slave present, if it's standalone on a cable you remove the jumper completely. If you are using 80 wire Ultra ATA cables (which is what you should be using on that motherboard and it shipped with one) you should use cable select, the drive's position on the cable determines master or slave.

[Daboo]

Thank you gentlemen, I think you hit the nail right on the head. As I said that is an old drive and its been a LONG time since I installed it originally. I have totally forgotten about removing the jumper if it's by itself on the cable and of course I no longer have the installation manual that came with it.

[glc]

Look on the circuit board under the jumper block - you should see a MA, SL, and CS there.

[Daboo]

Look on the circuit board under the jumper block - you should see a MA, SL, and CS there.

Yes, I know it's there! But the critical thing with my issue in this thread is that if you install the drive as the only one on a 40 conductor IDE cable (as I did when testing the new system) you should not have a jumper installed at all. There is no instruction for that on the drive itself.

[ZANEY123]

put it on cable select then! and put it on the end of the cable or tlike the other guys said i have a wd drive also and if i am using that drive only then i would leave no jumpers at all and set the bios to auto detect and should work fine

[Tuf]

WD has instructions on their site for jumper settings.

[glc]

In all fairness, WD retail drives ship with a pamphlet that explains jumper settings - OEM drives don't, but they assume that the OEM knows how to set them up. I would say that 75% of the WD drives I've seen in the past 5 years or so do come with a jumper chart on the drive label that shows the jumper in the "neutral" position for standalone, which is the same as removing it altogether.