arggh! side effects of my adventure with tinyxp

[danny_galaga]

SO, at one stage while figuring out how to format my mame cab hard drive, i had the bright idea of pulling out my secondary drive on this pc and plugging in the mame hard drive. That was of no help. I eventually sorted out the formatting thing.

But now, my pc wont recognise my secondary hard drive any more! It is on the same ribbon as the main drive. Ive just pulled the pc apart and cleaned out all the dust while I was in there, and reseated the cables etc. How do I go about figuring out why my pc doesnt recognise that drive anymore?

The secondary drive feels like it is spinning, and it is warm, so I know it is at least getting power and spinning the platter.

I am running Ubuntu, but can also boot to xp.

[jimmy2x2x]

Have you set the jumpers on the back of the drive to MASTER and SLAVE for each drive?

[loadman]

Have you set the jumpers on the back of the drive to MASTER and SLAVE for each drive?

What he said

[danny_galaga]

Jumpers remain unchanged. They did cross my mind, so I wiggled them in and out to make sure they are connecting.

[jimmy2x2x]

Sounds like you are confusing ribbon cables with jumpers



On the back our your drive you should have a bank of jumpers and a sticker telling you what they do
It should resemble the picture above

Set the primary drive to master
Set the secondary drive to slave

master drive should be on the end of the cable
slave drive should be in the middle of the cable

[danny_galaga]

No confusion at all. I wriggled the jumpers in and out. They make an electrical connection. I was thinking the connections they make might be a bit shakey.

To reiterate, I pulled out the secondary drive. In its place I put in a drive I wanted to format. Was a silly idea in the end. I put back the original secondary drive. It was a straight swap (and yes, I turned the pc off each time I was doing the changes). There was no need for me to change jumper settings during this procedure. That was yesterday. Today was probably the first time I wanted to access the secondary drive, which was when I realised it wasn't showing. Since there was a slight chance it was due to something being bumped while I was mucking around the other day, I decided to clean the machine out and reseat everything while I was at it before I posted here. Couldn't hurt, and at least now the whole thing will be running cooler!

But that hasn't solved the problem. I forgot to mention that this PC has IDE cables, and the drive I was trying to format was SATA. I was using a IDE to SATA adapter. Hard to imagine that has anything to do with it, but better I mention it now.

[jimmy2x2x]

Not sure how master and slave allocation work with a SATA drive

I would guess that it would need to be on its own IDE port, or it might be locked to master setting

Are the drives detected in the BIOS?

[danny_galaga]

Not sure how master and slave allocation work with a SATA drive

I would guess that it would need to be on its own IDE port, or it might be locked to master setting

Are the drives detected in the BIOS?

Ha! Didn't even think to start there! that's why I post these dumb questions  

I just check BIOS now...

Ok, just checked. It's not seeing it in BIOS. If I hit enter on the secondary slot, it shows as being set to AUTO, which sounds reasonable. I don't remember if that's what it was before...

[jimmy2x2x]

try the sata drive on its own

use the end of the cable for the ide/sata adapter

then check the bios again

[danny_galaga]

try the sata drive on its own

use the end of the cable for the ide/sata adapter

then check the bios again

I'm probably not making it very clear. Forget the SATA drive! That is in my MAME cab and is a totally different problem. My problem is that this PC is now not seeing the secondary drive. Both drives in this PC are IDE

[jimmy2x2x]

OK

1) set drive A to master and put it on the end of the IDE cable
2) Check it is detected in the bios

Repeat for drive B

If they both show up, thats a good sign, if not then there is a more serious problem than configuration

If they do both show.

Put your boot drive on the end of the IDE cable with the jumper set to master
Put the secondary drive in the middle of the IDE cable with the jumper set to slave

Let me know how you get on

BIOS should be set to auto

You shouldnt have to tamper with any other settings unless you have changed something already.

[danny_galaga]

I seem to have a ---smurfing--- 'reverse' Midas touch when it comes to pcs!

The secondary doesn't seem to be working in any configuration, on either end of the cable. This seems to imply the drive is faulty. ---by the flying spaghetti monster's hairy nether regions!---.

Interestingly, I looked around to see if I had any other IDE hard drives I could try. I found one that was still working. Or at least it was recognised when set to 'cable select' and put on the end of the cable. But NONE of the hard drives, including the main drive, showed in any configuration when I put it on the middle of the cable. So, busted hard drive AND faulty cable? Sounds unlikely, but then having my two year old hard drive die as soon as I remove it seemed unlikely too 

I'll await any further input anyone might have, and if there's no good news, I'll have to buy another hard drive.  I'm not as freaked as I could be, because I learnt long ago to have a complete backup, which I do in the form of a USB hard drive, which I backed up only a few days ago. Still that means there's only one copy of all my precious stuff right now, which makes me a tad nervous...

[jimmy2x2x]

Dont you have a different IDE cable to try?

Buy one of those before a new drive

Also try the other IDE port on the motherboard (if it has one)

[danny_galaga]

Dont you have a different IDE cable to try?

Buy one of those before a new drive

Also try the other IDE port on the motherboard (if it has one)

Oh, that was the other interesting thing. I did try another IDE cable, but it's older. The wires are thicker, I have no idea of the ramifications of that, but when you have technology where the serial positioning of something makes a difference, anything is possible! In this case, nothing at all worked on that older cable. As you say, I will buy a new cable first and see if that does the trick. I will remain nervous about my USB backup until then...

Thanks for your help so far!

[jimmy2x2x]

The advice I have given is of a general nature, depending on the age of the hardware some drives may require manual settings to be entered into the bios.

There is a lot of possible variations to this problem, but it sounds like you are on the right track

Good Luck!

[abispac]

you mention that you tried both hard drives on the same ide cable but you did not mention that you did mess with the jumpers on the back, as many of the hard drives jumper configuration are the same, some older ones are not, also i discover that in some motherboards the master single combination dosnt work, i had to set both hard drives to cable select nd that was the only way it worked for some motherboards, now you mention that you have an extra ide cable, then just use one cable for each hard drive, make sure the booting hard drive goes in the ide1 slot on the motherboard and the other one in the ide slot 2 . you have to make sure that both hard drives are set to master in the jumpers of the back, perhaps if you put pictures i can help you better.
Now when placing a new drive configuration, some motherboards need to be turn off and on 2 times to recognise the newer instaled drives.or if in the bios might says (where you see that they are set to auto)press Fsomenthing to detect drive, you must press Fsomenthing to detect the drive.
But im pretty sure your problem its in the back of the drives with the jumper....

[abispac]

thi might help http://

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[danny_galaga]

thi might help

I'm a computer retard but even I know how to change a jumper position 

Thanks for the advice though. You can never assume how little a person knows, so it's much appreciated. When testing, I basically worked through every combination of jumper setting and drive position on the cable including just one drive on each position.

Having successfully put that secondary drive in myself some years ago, I'm pretty sure there was nothing that needed to be done other than have the drive set to 'cable select'. I don't even recall ever having to go into BIOS on this machine.

[abispac]

then the drive might gone bad....

[Havok]

Any hard drive remotely modern is going to be Cable Select; Slave\Master settings went out a long time ago. If you are just putting it back in I would suspect the cable might be bad. It's pretty easy to pull the connector on the cable loose, so if you have another cable I would swap that in and see if that resolves the problem.

Another option to see if the drive is good; put the primary connector (usually the first one - not the one on the end) on the second drive and see if the BIOs detects it. That way you can be pretty sure it's the cable that is bad.

And of course, be silly and check that the power connector is on the second drive as well...

Also - to address jimmy2x2x's statement about SATA drives, they have a dedicated connection for each drive; no more CS, Slave or Master setting...

[jimmy2x2x]

Also - to address jimmy2x2x's statement about SATA drives, they have a dedicated connection for each drive; no more CS, Slave or Master setting...

I am well aware of SATA drives not having cs/master/slave settings, I was talking about the use of a SATA to IDE adapter as mentioned by danny.

[danny_galaga]

Got the new cable in the mail today and I'm back in business! I promise never to use this PC as a testbench ever again 

[jimmy2x2x]

hehe excellent news!

[danny_galaga]

Well, I sure wish I'd never tried to use my PC as a test bench for my MAME hard drive!

Yesterday, everything went well with the new cable. I shut down the PC and went out for a while. When I came back I turned on the PC and got a 'no operating system found' message 

Long story short, I thought I'd put in a spare hard drive I found to see what it would say. Of course that one was empty, so I thought I may as well put XP onto it and see if it works. But like the dolt that I am, i ended up reformatting and installing xp on the SLAVE drive!

What's done is done. I have my USB backup, so I have lost almost nothing important. And it turns out there was nothing wrong with the master drive anyway. But now if I leave the slave drive in there, I get the 'no operating system found' message again. I deleted the partition on the slave to start again (this time I made sure there was only one drive on there while i was doing it  ).

If i take out the slave drive, it starts normally.

To sum up

MASTER- on end of cable, cable select. recognised in BIOS
SLAVE- middle of cable, cable select, recognised in BIOS

Physically, does that sound correct? Now, maybe to get the slave working again, I may have to make a new partition for it. I tried doing this by taking out the master, putting the slave on the end of the cable and booting with the xp cd. Thing is, when I partition it, it then goes on to try and install xp on it again. Not surprisingly. How do I get the PC to recognise this slave drive?

[gryhnd]

If I am following you correctly...and I'm a bit distracted b/w this post and the fact that I just walked in the door to discover my father in law's golden retriever shredded my wife's lunch bag and there's food, foam, and plastic everywhere....

I think if you wipe the slave clean (you don't need XP on it right?) you might be OK. I have some vague recollection that if there are MBRs on more than one drive this can confuse things at boot time. Since you installed XP on the slave drive, there's a MBR on there now too.