Installed 2nd hard drive (IDE) when primary drive is SCSI

[jurassicpc]

I have a computer that was built for me in Mar 1999 for video editing. At that time the only drives available for dependable video capture were SCSI drives. The original system components are:

• Pentium II 350 MHz, mid-tower case
• 250 watt power supply
• DFI BX chipset mainboard (PX2BL, p/n PB61B1)
• 64Mb Kingston SDRAM
• 1.44 FDD
• ATI Xpert 98 AGP video accelerator 8Mb SGRAM
• 40x CD-ROM drive
• Adaptec 2940U2W kit Ultra Wide PCI SCSI adapter
• 9.1 Gig Quantum Atlas III AV 8ms 7200 RPM SCA SCSI hard drive
• Pinnacle Miro Video DC30 Plus PCI 32 bit DAC
• extra case fan

I recently added 256M SDRAM memory and an Entertainer 16x DVD drive from Mad Dog Multimedia. I use an external CD-RW (USB1) for digital output of edited video footage. So far, so good.
Then I discovered that some of my productions required more than the 7Gig available on my SCSI drive to encode to digital.

I bought an internal WD 80Gig IDE drive to remedy that problem.
The drive is a WD Caviar 7200 RPM 3.5-inch EIDE drive. I managed the physical installation. On booting the system up though, the Plug and Play Bios gave the message Primary IDE Master detected (press F4 to skip) . I went into CMOS to setup auto detect and LBA, but the reboot was unsuccessful. The system continued to hang and pressing F4 did nothing. When I removed the IDE drive cable from the IDE socket, the computer booted fine. I inserted the IDE cable again and the system booted fine but did not see the IDE drive! WD's drive installation software did not see it either.

I understand that the system was originally trying to make the new IDE drive primary, when I need the SCSI drive to remain primary. I would welcome ANY suggestions that might help me solve the problem before I do something more radical like flashing the bios (which is very outdated). I'm comfortable with my systems, but am not really technically informed and don't want to make a mistake.

I'm sorry for the length of this thread, but I didn't know how to be clear and keep it short. Please help!

[TwoRails]

Hi jurassicpc,

Welcome to PC Mechanic !!

First, I'm not a SCSI guy.... But did you partition and format the new IDE drive?

It is detected in the BIOS?

Do you have a BIOS option to boot first from SCSI?

TwoRails

[HAL9000]

Set your BIOS to boot from SCSI first. Chances are it's looking to boot from the new drive and nothing is there. If that doesn't work, make the drive something else other than Primary Master.

[jurassicpc]

Originally posted by TwoRails Hi jurassicpc, Welcome to PC Mechanic !! First, I'm not a SCSI guy.... But did you partition and format the new IDE drive? It is detected in the BIOS? Do you have a BIOS option to boot first from SCSI? TwoRails

I can't get system or software to see new IDE drive in order to format and partition.

BIOS doesn't see it now.

BIOS bootstring is SCSI, C, A (C being original SCSI drive)

Thanks for responding.

[jurassicpc]

Originally posted by HAL9000 Set your BIOS to boot from SCSI first. Chances are it's looking to boot from the new drive and nothing is there. If that doesn't work, make the drive something else other than Primary Master.

Thanks! Made IDE drive primary slave; system boots well and WD drive installation software sees it.

Installation software requires running from MS-DOS and when I request 'format and partition' it can't see the operating system (on SCSI). I made a boot disk, but no luck.

At least the drive installation software can see it now. How do I get around the operating system requirement? I still don't want to boot from the IDE drive.

Thanks for responding.

Also how do I reply to someone's suggestion without using 'quote reply'. Your patience is appreciated

[Xayd]

As far as the bios is concerned, "C" is the first IDE master drive. It doesn't know which drive you have your OS on. Set it to boot to SCSI first.

Seeing as this is the only IDE drive in your computer, take all of the jumpers for master/slave/CS off of the new drive.

Leave it on the primary IDE channel, with your BIOS still booting to SCSI first.

As far as formatting and partitioning, I assume you're using NT4 or Win2000?

If so just go to control panel/administratitve tools.

There will be a "disk administrator" option under NT4, and a "disk management" option in under "computer management" in Win2000. Either of those will see your unpartitioned and unformatted drive just fine, and allow you to format and partition the drive within Windows.

There's a reply box at the bottom of each thread you can use btw to submit replies .

[jurassicpc]

Thank you.

C is in fact the SCSI drive with the OS on it and the BIOS boot string is set for SCSI,C,A. Thanks to you, Xayd, and Hal9000 I have a clean boot.

Unfortunately I'm still running Windows98 (does 'jurassic' mean anything now? I can't get the manufacturer's drive install software to see operating system on SCSI drive so that I can partition and format new IDE drive.

Apologies to all if I seem dense , but I'm trying my best to understand and am learning from each reply.

Thanks for answering.

[glc]

You have 2 issues here - your bios can't handle an 80 gig drive - and EZ-Bios won't work if the boot drive is SCSI, and there is a FDISK issue with Win98 on drives over 64 gigs. The FDISK issue is easily fixed, M$ has a patch for it, but the bios issue is gonna be tough to work around. I would buy a Promise Ultra 100 or Ultra 133 controller card, and stick it in a PCI slot HIGHER than your 2940. Connect the WD to the Promise card on its IDE1 with the provided 80 pin cable and set the drive jumper to CS. The reason you need to put it in a higher slot than the 2940 is the Promise is seen by bios as a SCSI device, and the boot order scans the PCI slots from bottom to top to see which one to boot from first. You should not use the WD install disk to prep the drive in this case - patch your FDISK and use it - just boot to DOS and run it - or replace the FDISK on your bootdisk with the patched version.

[Dan]

jurrasicpc-
I don't have much to add to help your situation, I think you're getting help from the best at this forum. I would mention that your system, in my humble opinion, is rather outdated for video editting. Even with your upgrades you're still skirting obsolete.
I would recommend two large hd's like the one you have, one for your os and the other for your video files (forget the scsi...newer and faster ide drives are giving scsi benchmarks a run for their too high pricetags). While 256mb is sufficient memory, 512 will serve you better working with large video format files. Your CPU is also pretty slow for effective video editting, 2gb+ would work flawlessly....which would mean a different motherboard. I know this doesn't help your current problem, but before you spend any more on your current system, I would recommend at least thinking about a whole new setup...think firewire....and DVD burner...

[Xayd]

Ugh, video editing on Win98, with a 350mhz CPU and 64 megs of RAM?

We'll be here when you wanna talk about building yourself a new machine jurassicpc, stop by anytime .

[Tuf]

I think his post says he has 320mb of RAM. While it is not a hotrod by today's standards he is swinging a lot less OS overhead around also. Depending on the software he using his computer should be as good as it was when it was new.

If he is still happy with it why spend the bucks?

I did a tremendous amount of work on those PII 350's and 400's and I thought they were the coolest thing when they came out. I think I was using a Pro 200 before them. While I need more computer than that now I still have at least one brand new in the box 350 and enough stuff to put one togethor. I have been think ing about it for my daughters to type reports on. My wife already thinks we have too many computers but can you really have too many?

[Xayd]

Ok, yeah, just noticed that he added another 256 megs.

It depends on what exactly you're doing.

If you're just capturing and burning short clips to CDs, then it wouldn't be that big of an issue.

If you're re-encoding the video and/or audio after it's captured, however, such as making VCDs, SVCDs, or using some other type of compression such as one of the MPEG4 codecs, then a P2 is hardly enough by today's standards.

Capture just requires a nice sound card, a capture card of some sort, and a hard drive that can keep up, but if you're modifying/compressing the final product then that's gonna be a direct function of your processor speed.

[jurassicpc]

glc: Thank you so much. It's worth cracking my piggy bank to get the controller and having system work. Does it matter if Promise is 100 or 133 as far as my system is concerned? (Never mind, stupid question in view of your recommendations) Again thanks and appreciation.

dan: Thanks for responding. I'm kind of stuck on following through with what I started. Have written down your hardware recommendations for when I build a new computer.

Xayd: 320M ram and only video editing software and win98 on system. But you're right, it would be nice to move from jurassic age to iron age As soon as money tree flowers, I'll be back for help building computer. I'll do it right this time and ask before I start. Thanks.

Tuf: You've helped me feel better about my dinosaur system. It does work (when I'm not tinkering with it) and will have to do me for a while longer. As for too many computers, I still have my Texas Instrument, my 8086, and several 256 machines. It's hard to get rid of my computer museum.

To everyone: Your friendly support and technical advice is deeply appreciated. I felt so lost before posting this thread. I'll be a frequent visitor to keep viewing and learning. Blessings

[jurassicpc]

Just a thought and a real stupid question. If I built another system, could I use the case, power supply and fans I already have? Would I just need to change motherboard and go completely IDE? System was built with plenty of room for expansion. Would building new system cost much more than I have spent upgrading? No urgency, just wanted to explore and plan.

Thanks and blessings

[Xayd]

You can get SCSI drives up to about 80 gigs, very expensive (500ish dollar range). You can get 36 gig drives that are relatively expensive (I paid 275 bucks for mine, a 10k RPM Fujitsu). You've also gotta consider the cost of a new controller to get the full benefit of U160, since yours is only an U2 (80mb/sec instead of 160mb/sec). An Adaptec 29160N or 19160 is gonna run you another couple hundred dollars on top of the cost of the drive(s).

But, unless your time is that valuable, I really can't justify it anymore. I capture MPEG-2 at 720x480, 2 channel audio, with no noticable dropped frames on one of those 80 gig WD drives that you got.

SCSI will still shine over IDE when copying over those 7 to 10 gig files from drive to drive, and the drives themselves do last longer, but IDE has caught up quite a bit and is still alot cheaper.

A new case and power supply only costs about 50 bucks, might as well get a new one when you upgrade.

You'll be going up to a new motherboard, yes, but not just for IDE. New CPU, DDR RAM, all of that stuff.

Here's a list of parts I threw together in a thread last week...

http://forum.pcmech.com/showthread.p...0&pagenumber=2

To build a nice machine complete with a new 19" flat monitor, generally you'll be looking at about 1000 dollars. Less the price you can sell off your current machine for, of course.

[glc]

A 250 watt power supply is a bit weak for today's components - might as well buy a new case as it won't cost you much more than just a replacement power supply. Plus, you can keep your existing machine almost intact for reuse somewhere. I'd just pull your new 80 gig drive and the Pinnacle card for the new machine and use the old one for general use. Your old machine has a BX board, which will run rock stable forever until 350 MHz is too weak to run anything. Look at the purchase of a controller card as an economical "band-aid" to keep what you have viable for a while for what you use it for.

[jurassicpc]

Thanks for sound advice. Just purchased Promise Ultra 133 controller card. Will be installing tonight. When it is all set, I'll send a EUREKA!.
Blessings,

[Tuf]

By the way Welcome to PC Mech!

[jurassicpc]

Thank you! I don't feel so stupid anymore, just welcomed.
Blessings,

[jurassicpc]

So sorry, feeling stupid again. Am in midst of installing Promise Ultra133 TX2 controller card. I have no schematic for my system so please bear with me. Step 4 of controller card installation says attach your system case's 2- or 4-pin LED cable to the LED connector on the ....... controller card. make sure (card) pin1 is aligned with (cable) pin1.

There are eight slots: 1 (brown) has a card with the monitor attached to it; 2 (gray ?pci?) is blank and where Ultra card will go; 3 (gray) has Adaptec SCSI card; 4 (gray) is blank; 5 (gray) has Miro video DC30 Plus video capture card; 6-8 (long and black) are blank, although inside slot cover of #8 has end of flat cable with SCSI connector.

The secondary motherboard IDE connector has a CDrom(master) and a DVDrom(slave) on it. There is a free 2-pin LED (I hope) cable on the CDrom power plug. The 4-pin LED connector runs from the DVDrom to the video capture card.

I don't know how to complete Step 4 given the above setup. Everything else seems to be clear. I have the Ultra driver and the updated FDISK for large drives ready to go and believe I understand the instructions from there. (Oops, I'm assuming I simply copy (in MS-DOS) the FDISK update to the same directory as the old one and answer yes to replace?)

Should I have started a new thread for this question?
Your patience is deeply appreciated.

[Tuf]

The LED is for the light on your case to tell when there is activity on the bus the hard drive is hooked to. Unless your case has more than one it is probably already hooked to the SCSI card. It doesn't need to be connected, it is there simply to light the hard drive indicator on your case. If you do have one and it isn't marked just try it one way if it doesn't work turn it around. You can't hurt it.

The brown slot with your video card is the AGP slot. The one next to it needs to stay empty, yes it's PCI. Put the new promise card in slot 4 on your setup. The other two slots (long and black) are ISA slots.

Really just make the SCSI card is inbetween your video card and your new promise card and that the PCI slot closest to your video card remains empty. It is actually a shared slot only to be used if you weren't using an AGP video card(AGP is better).

[glc]

You will need to move your SCSI card down a slot or two so the Ultra card is closer to the video card - or it's going to try to boot off the Ultra instead of the scsi.

[jurassicpc]

Thanks, here goes. Hopefully next post will be 'Eureka!'

[Tuf]

Ooops glad glc remembered you are booting from the SCSI drive!

[jurassicpc]

This is beginning to feel like pulling teeth I'm at this point now:

Ultra card installed in pci slot 4 between SCSI card and video capture card. Successful bootup, Ultra card detected and drive installed. Reboot detection shows D0 WDC WD800BB-00CAA1 LBA 76319MB Ultra DMA 5 and at bottom IDE BUS Master Enabled . Device Manager in control panel shows WD drive, says it's working properly. Ran updated FDISK in MS-DOS, apparently only sees SCSI disk.

Windows reboot, Adaptec Drive Preparer pops up detecting unprepared WD hard drive. Clicking next gives me an 'illegal operation' message and closes drive preparer.

Ultra drive apparently detected but not partitioned and not formatted, -sigh- . Ready to tear out hair. help?

[mike breck]

Hi jurassicpc,

How do you have that WD drive jumpered - Master or Cable Select? If you want to jumper it as Master, you should remove all the plastic caps from the Hard Drive jumpers.

However, try setting it to Cable Select. Presumably the Controller card came with an 80 wire/40 pin ATA cable. The blue connector goes to the card and black connector to the HD. The middle connector is for a Slave - which you don't have.

When you enter FDISK, there is a line that reads "Current Fixed Disk Drive: 1". To change to your second HD, you need to enter "5" at the "Enter choice" line at the bottom of the screen.

That should show you a summary of both HDs.

At "Enter fixed disk drive number (1-2) at the bottom of the screen, enter "2". That should bring you to the FDISK options for HD 2. You obviously then need to create a partition(s) and format the HD.

If the WD is jumpered correctly and the drivers have been installed for the PCI Controller card, then FDISK should "see" your second HD.

What model of Controller card did you buy?

HTH

[jurassicpc]

BINGO! . All is well. Profound thanks and appreciation to all of you for your kindness and patience. Special thanks to Tuf and glc who stayed with me the whole way, and to Mike Breck who supplied the final piece.

I learned a lot during this installation and need to learn more so I can pass on your kindness to others (I'm hurrying as fast as I can ).

Blessings to all,

[jurassicpc]

Originally posted by mike breck Hi jurassicpc, How do you have that WD drive jumpered - Master or Cable Select? If you want to jumper it as Master, you should remove all the plastic caps from the Hard Drive jumpers. However, try setting it to Cable Select. Presumably the Controller card came with an 80 wire/40 pin ATA cable. The blue connector goes to the card and black connector to the HD. The middle connector is for a Slave - which you don't have. When you enter FDISK, there is a line that reads "Current Fixed Disk Drive: 1". To change to your second HD, you need to enter "5" at the "Enter choice" line at the bottom of the screen. That should show you a summary of both HDs. At "Enter fixed disk drive number (1-2) at the bottom of the screen, enter "2". That should bring you to the FDISK options for HD 2. You obviously then need to create a partition(s) and format the HD. If the WD is jumpered correctly and the drivers have been installed for the PCI Controller card, then FDISK should "see" your second HD. What model of Controller card did you buy? HTH

Per glc's recommendation, I bought a Promise Ultra133 TX2 controller card.

[mike breck]

You're very welcome and the Promise is good card.

So what solved your problem - jumpers or changing the "Current Fixed Disk Drive" in FDISK?

I assume it was the FDISK option.

[jurassicpc]

FDISK option 5