Adding and removing HD's problems

[next61]

I'm a total newbee puting my hands in the wrong places...but this time I need your help! I put together this system with two (2)HDs WD120Gb running a 2.53Ghz P4 on a Intel mobo. My son wants it for his games since there is a cool WinFast A280, 128 Mb DDR nVidia 4200 video card on it. Now I want to use one of the drives for my system and when I take the drive out (I choose the empty one) I can't start the system. I'm running XP home ed. There must be something on that drive that is used by the system to start the machine; I don't know what. Do you have any ideeas how to deal with this? Please help me.

[Cricket]

Are you sure you're removing the slave or second hard drive and not the primary one with the OS on it?

Are you getting any error messages? If so, what does it say?

If both hard drives are on the same IDE cable, make sure you're removing the one from the grey connector, not the black one.

Cricket

[Iman74]

To add to that. After removing the drive and assuming in the original system the result you have only one HDD in there now, make sure you change the jumpers so it reflects as a single drive.

[reboot]

And update the BIOS to reflect the fact that there's only 1 drive.

[next61]

Yes I did that; I removed the slave drive, I kept the one with the master jumpers. Update the BIOS? The starting screen is an Intel welcome screen: Intel Desktop Boards enter F2 for set up F12 for network then that's it. So basically the question is this: If I installed windows on this system that had initially two drives and now I want only one drive what do I have to do? As I said I kept the master on the gray -white connector. Do you guys understand... I feel like a ....!

[9600baud]

What happens when you start the computer? Does it give you any error messages?

Hopefully you didnt setup the two drives in RAID or you might not be able to run them separately...

[Cricket]

Originally posted by next61 Yes I did that; I removed the slave drive, I kept the one with the master jumpers. Update the BIOS? The starting screen is an Intel welcome screen: Intel Desktop Boards enter F2 for set up F12 for network then that's it. So basically the question is this: If I installed windows on this system that had initially two drives and now I want only one drive what do I have to do? As I said I kept the master on the gray -white connector. Do you guys understand... I feel like a ....!

On a 80 wire UltaATA IDE cable, it's the black connector on the end that designates the drive as the master...the grey connector is for the slave. Is the drive jumper set to CS or CSel? It should be.

The Intel motherboard should auto detect that there is no slave hard drive present and set itself up accordingly...but the drive jumper and position on the IDE cable must be correct.

Cricket

[reboot]

Yup, rejumper your master to CS if it's got an 80 wire cable. Set as "Master" it thinks there's a slave attached still.
Hit F2 go into BIOs and do whatever it is in an Intel BIOS to remove the old drive.
If it's self-detecting, you still must jumper the drive correctly.

[glc]

The Intel bios totally takes care of itself - it has to be a cable/jumpering issue. Western Digital drives cannot be jumpered Master if they are the only drive on the cable - but with 80 wire cables you should be using Cable Select anyway - blue to board, black to master, gray to slave.

[next61]

Cricket, Reboot and Glc... you guys are awesome. CS done and the damn thing works...Yeahhhhhh! But, I got another problem: after all this my floppy drive light stays on all the time, as soon as I turn on the computer goes on and stays on. Hmmmm! Any thougths?

[thekidjfm]

Reverse the cable on the floppy,You've probably got it on backwards.

[next61]

Thanx guys, that was it...the damn thing was reversed. You are the best.