Author Topic: Help! I Can't Get My New HDD To Work! (Read 3143 times)

slapaham · « **on:** November 20, 2009, 08:08:10 am »

Hi people

I'm having difficulties getting my new Samsung F3 1TB internal HDD to work. It's SATA, however, my PC is a very modern IDE desktop. I purchased one of those cheapie SATA>IDE adaptors off ebay so I could use it but I'm having problems. I'm sure it's because of how it is set-up rather than an actual problem with the HDD itself. I've left the existing HDD in there and that is set to master... but as the adaptor and the SATA HDD don't have jumpers I can't set these to slave - it makes me think this is the problem.

I get the following error messages

secondary drive 0 not found

when I press F1 to continue, the computer boots from the original IDE HDD as per normal...

what am I doing wrong? on the first occasion I booted the PC up with the SATA HDD installed it recognised it as I got a new HDD bubble appear in the bottom right corner (I'm using XP by the way!) - however, other than that, I have got signs of life... please help me!

Thanks (in advance) to anyone who can help!

HaRuMaN · « **Reply #1 on:** November 20, 2009, 09:12:49 am »

Have you:

Right click My Computer and select Manage
Go down (on the window that pops up) and select Disk Management (under the Storage)

Can you see your disk there?

Bobulus · « **Reply #2 on:** November 20, 2009, 09:14:39 am »

Okay, first let's see if XP is still detecting your new drive. If it detects your new drive, but the drive is unformatted, it won't show up in My Computer.

- Open up your Admin Tools (accessible from the Control Panel or sometimes your start menu) and launch 'Computer Management'.
- On the left-hand menu, select Disk Management
- This will list all your physical hard drives and show all the partitions on these drives. Be very careful here, as deleting the wrong partition would be...a bad thing.

Does it list your new drive?

edit: Damn, HarumaN already said the same thing while I was typing.

HaRuMaN · « **Reply #3 on:** November 20, 2009, 09:15:37 am »

My way's quicker...

slapaham · « **Reply #4 on:** November 20, 2009, 09:39:02 am »

Hi guys

Thanks for your 2 little guides!

That's reassuring - it is showing up!

It says -

Disk1
Unknown
931.51GB
Not Initialized

It then shows the total capacity as 'not allocated'...

where next?

slapaham · « **Reply #5 on:** November 20, 2009, 09:46:02 am »

I've now initialized it as I'm guessing that will help!

When I right click on the unallocated capacity it allows me a new partition... I guess this is what I'm after? It gives me the option of a primary and extended partition - which one am I after and is there anything else I should bare in mind while doing this? I'm guessing this will make HDD function?

I also noticed that my current IDE drive has about 11gb worth of unpartitioned space... I guess I need to hunt down my GPart disk to utilise that...

HaRuMaN · « **Reply #6 on:** November 20, 2009, 09:51:43 am »

You'll also have to assign it a drive letter. Once it's formatted and partitioned and assigned a letter, it will show up in Windows.

HaRuMaN · « **Reply #7 on:** November 20, 2009, 09:54:47 am »

Make it a Primary partition, btw.

Bobulus · « **Reply #8 on:** November 20, 2009, 10:28:24 am »

Glad it worked.

Hard to say why you have unpartitioned space on your old drive. Unpatched XP had a maximum hard drive size that service packs fixed, so that could be it....but it could also be something else, so for a meazly 11gb, I'd suggest not fooling with it.

The boot message is something else entirely. It's probably giving you that message because it's trying to boot off the sata drive instead of the ide one. To not get that message in the future, you should double-check that the bios is prioritizing the ide drive.

slapaham · « **Reply #9 on:** November 20, 2009, 10:57:29 am »

Thanks guys!

It's actually on 3.5gb of unpartitioned space - so sod messing around with it - more trouble than it's worth considering it's full of files!

In the process of formatting the 1tb drive... it's around a third done now... I guess that kind of capacity takes a while! Really appreciate the help with initializing it - something I'll definitely remember in future - this is the first time I've ever added a HDD.

Once it's formatted, I'll check that it shows up in My Computer and then if it has, I'll reboot to see whether or not I still get the boot message - I have a feeling I will but now that the HDD is initialized it will hopefully be easier/possible to prioritise the IDE drive over the SATA thus eliminating the error. I'll keep you posted... I have a feeling I may still need a little assistance further down the line but fingers crossed it will be a smooth ride from here on out!

bkenobi · « **Reply #10 on:** November 20, 2009, 11:37:50 am »

Sometimes windows will leave a very small portion of the drive unformatted. In the instances that I have run across, that space is on the order of Mb, not Gb (like under 100Mb). AFAIK, this has to do with how the sectors are allocated. You can create another partition with the unused space if you want, but it's usually so small that it wouldn't be worth the effort.

slapaham · « **Reply #11 on:** November 20, 2009, 02:04:34 pm »

Mmm... well, I'm still having problems... it shows up in My Computer but that's about it... I cannot complete formatting - not even on 'quick format' and the boot error still occurs... it doesn't even seem to recognise it in the boot menus...

I think the problem lies with the fact that both HDDs are situated at '0'...

anyone got any advice? I'm a bit lost as to what to try next.

Bobulus · « **Reply #12 on:** November 20, 2009, 02:11:10 pm »

Boot error is seperate. Worry about that one later.

What does it say when you try to format? Exact text of error messages?

Also, just to double-check something I assumed before....you do have the service packs for XP installed, right?

HaRuMaN · « **Reply #13 on:** November 20, 2009, 02:11:21 pm »

Quote

cheapie SATA>IDE adaptors

My guess is that this may be your problem...

slapaham · « **Reply #14 on:** November 20, 2009, 02:17:38 pm »

Hi

Yes, all installed... the error message reads something like 'format cannot be completed for this drive' (that isn't exact btw)

Quote from: Bobulus on November 20, 2009, 02:11:10 pm

Boot error is seperate. Worry about that one later.

What does it say when you try to format? Exact text of error messages?

Also, just to double-check something I assumed before....you do have the service packs for XP installed, right?

bkenobi · « **Reply #15 on:** November 20, 2009, 08:34:52 pm »

Just curious...did you verify that the SATA->IDE is not a IDE->SATA? I've only done a small amount of research (and a while back), but some of the cheaper adapters are not bidirectional. If it's detecting the drive, this probably isn't the issue though.

slapaham · « **Reply #16 on:** November 21, 2009, 05:52:17 am »

Well, the drive is SATA and the adaptor allows you to plug in IDE and Molex so I'm assuming it's okay. I may be wrong. However, the fact that it's being detected makes me think that's not the problem - like you said! I have a feeling it's something conflicting or the fact I haven't been able to fully format it. I did a bit of research and formatting HDDs can be a problem... I read somewhere about using the Windows 98 disc to format HDDs. I just wonder whether once the HDD is formatted correctly the problems might become easier to solve...

HaRuMaN · « **Reply #17 on:** November 21, 2009, 09:37:31 am »

Download a utility called swissknife, and see if you can format the HDD that way.

http://www.compuapps.com/Download/swissknife/swissknife.htm

slapaham · « **Reply #18 on:** November 22, 2009, 10:05:07 am »

Cheers chap

I'll give that a go!

DillonFoulds · « **Reply #19 on:** November 22, 2009, 11:43:40 am »

I'll vouch for swissknife, if you're trying to format fat32 for a larger storage capacity. My PVR accepts only fat32, even for a 1tb hdd. Sooo frustrating.

Otherwise go with either ntfs(windows) or ext3(linux), depending on if your application accepts it. Or if you're one of -those- types, hfs+...

Personally i use a combination of swissknife for the lightweight drive management, or Acronis Disc Director suite for all those multi-partition more complicated setups.

Also, make sure you're NOT flagging the new drive as active, or when you go to format in windows, windows will move some system files around, and you can really fudge your OS up.

slapaham · « **Reply #20 on:** November 22, 2009, 01:34:14 pm »

Right... I have the HDD formatted... the way I achieved this is by plugging it in with the IDE connector that was originally in the DVD drive... worked perfectly and boots up fine - no conflicting. However, I need the DVD drive to encode CDs to the HDD - this PC is being used as a touchscreen jukebox - so this kind of defeats the point if I can't get my CDs on there! $:-\$

It seems the only spare IDE cable that I could plug the HDD into causes confliction - the PC won't even boot up - not even when you press F1 - it gets so far then freezes on a black screen...

Would changing the jumper on the DVD drive perhaps do anything? Looking at the BIOS - the 2 HDDs are set to primary masters... and there are no primary slaves... I'm assuming that the DVD drive was once set as the second primary master and now that the 1tb HDD is set up as a primary master it's taken it's place? I assume technically you can't have 3 masters (inc. the DVD drive!) - my assumption might be wrong but might the jumper setting now need to be changed on the DVD drive to slave to enable no conflicts?

Hope this makes sense!

slapaham · « **Reply #21 on:** November 22, 2009, 02:09:51 pm »

Updated my last post with a new theory... anyone tell me whether or not I'm barking up the wrong tree!

slapaham · « **Reply #22 on:** November 22, 2009, 05:33:05 pm »

Wahoo! My theory worked... set the jumper on the DVD drive to slave and it's all working perfectly!

Case closed!

DillonFoulds · « **Reply #23 on:** November 22, 2009, 08:18:37 pm »

Why wouldn't you just set the sata-ide adaptor to slave, and leave it on ide0 with your main/boot drive? Or better yet, set all your devices to CS, if they got it, and then let the mobo assign the drives?

Either way, glad you got it all figured out bud!

slapaham · « **Reply #24 on:** November 23, 2009, 06:59:32 am »

No jumper settings on the SATA>IDE adaptor.

Also, not sure what CS is, but the settings on the BIOS were rather limited and so the way I did it in the end was the only way. It may have taken a few days but I hadn't installed a HDD before this and I did figure it out in the end. While it was frustrating, it at least gave me quite a bit of knowledge on the architecture and for that, I think it was a good thing.

bkenobi · « **Reply #25 on:** November 23, 2009, 11:49:09 am »

CS = Cable Select. If you have all of your devices set to CS, then there will be no conflicts because wherever they are on the IDE cable, that's what it will show up as. All of the drives I've purchased in the last few years were set to CS out of the box.

slapaham · « **Reply #26 on:** November 23, 2009, 12:06:38 pm »

Yeah, I had a look to see whether or not that was a possibility but cable select wasn't available. In a way, I probably made a bit of a meal out of getting to the solution but learnt a lot in the process... and how I came to the conclusion was through a bit of experimenting. There wasn't really another way. In the end, a fairly simple process and it's all working how I want it to now - so that's the main thing. I was weary that the cheapy SATA>IDE may not be a particularly good solution but it seems to be doing the job perfectly well - not bad when these can be bought for around £3-4 from Hong Kong and £5 domestically.

DillonFoulds · « **Reply #27 on:** November 23, 2009, 12:30:34 pm »

What about just setting to to SL(Slave) ide0-2, and your main hdd as cs/ma(master)ide0-1, leave your dvd drive as cs on ide1-1


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