HELP! please anyone help me there's something wrong with my HD

[crashwg]

For some reason, my hard drive doesn't want to boot up!  Here's what I did.  I got a new HD, Western Digital 120 gig 7200 rpm model:WD1200JBRTL.  

In the literature that came with it it says to look at the existing HD to see if the motherboard supports CS(cable select), so I check that and the HD in there, Samsung, was set to CS so I left the new HD on CS which was the way it came.  I started up the computer with the supplied CDrom and went through the steps and then it said something to the effect of "your HD is now set up, please restart"  so I do.  And when it restarts I get a screen that says:

"We apologize fo the inconvenience, but windows did not start successfully.  A recent hardware or software change might have caused this....more stuff here, doesn't seem important enough to type....
Safe Mode
Safe Mode with Networking
Safe Mode with Command Prompt

Last Known Good Configuration (blah blah blah)

Start Windows Normally"

No matter which option I choose it starts loading for about 10 seconds and then it stops.

I have since disconnected the new HD and I get the same result when I try to start up.  I also changed the jumpers on both drives to MA for the Samsung and SL for the WD, still nothing.

Someone please help me!  My GF is going to kill me.  I have like 3 gigs of pictures of my daughter on that HD.

[Witchboard]

It's okay.  You can always recover the data from your HD by installing a parallel copy of your OS.  Have you hit WD's website to see what they say about the error?

[crashwg]

I went to WD site but I don't have a error code or anything like that so I have no idea what to search for.  I'm currently on the phone with eMachines tech support, or should I say I'm on hold...

[crashwg]

Uh... yea.  The guy told me that I need to contact WD because of somthing about how when you hook up a second HD the jumppers... I have no idea he was mumbling.  I thing he just didn't have an answer and was passin the buck.

[crashwg]

Grrrr...       "Session check failure. Please try again."
The board won't let me modify my post.

I guess I'm just waiting till mornin' when WD's tech support is available  

Since when were computers so difficult to upgrade?  A couple of years ago, it was easy as pie.  Heck, I put together my first computer

[crashwg]

Uh, I have no idea what the heck I was doing wrong, but it now works.  I managed to get the computer to start up in safe mode and I downloaded all the available xp updates, then I attached the new HD again and it works... YAY!  I'm so happy.  Now I have more than 2 gigs of free space!!!

[nipsmg]

crash:

Glad you got it working.  One little tidbit I'm going to drop here for the kiddies:

MAKE SURE YOUR ONBOARD IDE CONTROLLER IS ATA/100/133 COMPATIBLE BEFORE BUYING A NEW HARD DRIVE!!!!

I've had a pc that had been randomly upgraded (motherboard, processor, ram, etc) over the period of a few years, and I went out a dropped a decent chunk of cash on a 120GB hd a while ago..  and came home... and couldn't get it to work..  I tried everything. Switching modes, trying to rip out the old HD and boot from floppy and try to manually partition and format the new drive.  I tried everything.. and no luck...

Because my friggin onboard IDE controller didn't work w/ it.  I had to go out and buy a separate ATA133 interface card  

So I (luckily) am given a new motherboard/processor from a friend who was upgrading, with an Athlon XP 1800+ in it (yay) and 384MB RAM.. guess what.. THAT THING DIDN'T HAVE AN ATA100/133 controller on it either!!  

Damn cheap motherboards.  

--NipsMG  

[Witchboard]

Glad to hear it.  

[crashwg]

With the controler cards, can you have more than the standard 4 devices hooked up to a computer?  Like, have 2 HD on one ribbon, 2 cd/dvd drives on the other and another HD or more on the controler card?

[Witchboard]

AFAIK IDE is limited to 4 devices per controller.  So, If you want 6 devices, you'll have to have 2 controller cards.  That's why SCSI is cool.  

[Rawker]

this may be common sense for most but i thought my HD was dead after i installed a new one, now 4 months later i pull it out of a box to try it again. while examining it i notice that there is a jumper setting for master or slave so i set it to slave and bam it works again. i also changed my setting on my new drive from slave to master and now it runs like 10x faster.

[crashwg]

The master and slave jumper settings are dependant on which plug you use on the cable.  It goes something like this:

()--------------()--------()
Blue           Grey       Black

The Blue being the one you attach to the motherboard, Grey would be SLAVE and the Black one is MASTER.  There is also something called Cable Select (CS) which if your motherboard recognizes is a heck of alot easier.  Basicaly when it's set to CS, it doesn't matter which plug you use.  Also, some harddrives will have settings for single, as in when you will only be attaching 1 HD to the Black plug.  I'm not sure if there are any other types of jumper settings out there, but those are the ones you will mostly see.