i installed a second hdd (western digital) in my friends computer as a slave. 2 days afterwards the primary hard drive (quantum) stopped booting and the bios now gives an error that says "no operating system is detected" and "system files not found"

it seems that the bios does not detect the primary hdd at all. we took it out and put it into another computer (unplugged all them wires from the cd-rom and put it into the supposedly 'dead' hdd (quantum)). didn't help. but the funny thing is that the other primary hdd in the second computer stopped booting too!

so what the hell could be the problem? logic board? head failure? could i have fried the boards by accident? (i swear to god, i didn't touch the primary hdd in the second pc, i only unplugged the cables from cd-rom which is working fine)

oh yeah, the western digital i installed he got from some shady person and it was kinda beat up, so there's a slight chance that it had bad electronics or sumfn, if that's possible. it's being detected fine. also, if i leave the quantum drive by itself as it was before, the green light doesn't light up at all as if there was no power to the drive. but the floppy, which is on the same power connector, works fine.

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Last edited by whiskers on Jun-14-2002 at 04:56

when you put the hd in the second comp did you remember to switch the jumpers to slave?? that may have cause a conflict...

can the BIOS still detect the original (I just mean when it's posting does it detect the HD) when it's the only thing on the channel and set to master (and it's terminated at the end of the cable)???

If you can make it show up on the post then chances are the controller card is gone and it's a pain in the butt to get any info off of it

Basically if I were you I'd check the following

1) Jumpers
2) make sure the cables are installed the right way (ie: the cable isn't in upside down...
3) make sure that the master is on the end of the cable and the slave is in the middle (some mobo's are finicky about this)
4) try different power cables and IDE Cables, you may just have a bad cable....
5) check your BIOS, your settings may have changed and it may not be looking to your HD for a boot image (ie: the order may have changed from Floppy, CDROM, HD to Floppy, CDROM, Nothing)

hope this helps... sometimes you just need to mess with it a bit...

Well if you put it back in the old machine and it worked. Or run both on a comp you know will detect it all should b good.

But make sure you can detect them in the bios first.

Press del when you boot up and go into the bios and click on hardrive detection or woteva it might be in yr bios. ANnd see if they r being picked up.

It maybe a windows problem, and might need to isntal the latest drivers. Or it maybe the fact the motherboards are old and need to get the latest update for them, so you cna flash them, and then they should detect the hard drive.

Most probably because hard drives that size were not heard of, so motherboards didnt detect them, like with processors etc.

So you may need to flash the bios, but be careful that is dodgy, and if you do it wrong u will have to send it back to the producers.

Anyway IMO it sounds like you have fucked them when transporting them. They r fragile things and can easily be broken, as the pcb is exposed under neath. So be careful.

But i have 2 hard drives in my comp.

On the same ide cable one as master one as slave and mine work fine

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hmm...sounds like a virus to me

lemme get this straight...u installed the new hd (wd) as a SLAVE, but the PRIMARY hd (quantum) got rooted?

if u installed the new hd as a secondary & it screwed up the primary drive twice on different computers, it makes sense

umm...hard to say how much u can recover...but good idea to get some anti-viral software asap i say

otherwise, if it's just jumper/bios settings i don't think that would explain why the primary drive is stuffed...shouldn't happen like that 'cos it will detect one drive, but not the other

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Peace 'n Love! • Mikey • Sydney, Australia.

thanks, guys, i will mess around with the bios. i also got some boot disks and two linux distributions to see if they will detected the goddamn thing.

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definitely check the jumpers and the position of the HDs on the IDE cable...next would be the boot sequence in the BIOS.

could it be the hardisk over heating? very doubtfull as you get the errors when it starts up but a slight posibility

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Beware of killer hamsters and the random running dogs.

Assuming on the 2nd computer that the CDROM was on the same IDE cable as the Master HDD.

When you took the dead master HDD to the new computer did you switch the jumpers on HDD to slave?

If not, you have 2 masters on the same cable...

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"...End? No, the journey doesn't end here. Death is just another path...one that we all must take.
The grey rain-curtain of this world rolls back, and all change to silver glass...and then you see it...
...white shores...and beyond...the far green country under a swift sunrise."

quote:

Originally posted by Fir3start3r Assuming on the 2nd computer that the CDROM was on the same IDE cable as the Master HDD. When you took the dead master HDD to the new computer did you switch the jumpers on HDD to slave? If not, you have 2 masters on the same cable...

no, the Master HDD was on a different cable, i just unplugged all the cables from the CDROM and connected them to the broken HDD. on startup neither drive was detected and when i reconnected everything to how it was before (removed the broken drive, that is) the pc wouldn't detect the original master HDD.

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quote:

Originally posted by TiestoInTheMix no, the Master HDD was on a different cable, i just unplugged all the cables from the CDROM and connected them to the broken HDD. on startup neither drive was detected and when i reconnected everything to how it was before (removed the broken drive, that is) the pc wouldn't detect the original master HDD.

Well then, either:

1) you have plugged it back in wrong
2) Fucked it some how
3) not plugged it in properly, make sure all the ide cables r in tight

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quote:

Originally posted by TiestoInTheMix no, the Master HDD was on a different cable, i just unplugged all the cables from the CDROM and connected them to the broken HDD. on startup neither drive was detected and when i reconnected everything to how it was before (removed the broken drive, that is) the pc wouldn't detect the original master HDD.

Hmmm...something doesn't sound right...
How about removing the master HDD on the 2nd computer and replacing THAT instead of the CDROM?
Then try and boot up with just the one drive in question and not introducing any more problems having 2 HDDs (especially since you think one is screwed...)
When you've done that, first check to see if the BIOS then recognizes the 'problem' drive and then boot up as normal to see if it goes anywhere.


PS.

quote:

i just unplugged all the cables from the CDROM

Are you talking about the IDE and audio cable here?

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"...End? No, the journey doesn't end here. Death is just another path...one that we all must take.
The grey rain-curtain of this world rolls back, and all change to silver glass...and then you see it...
...white shores...and beyond...the far green country under a swift sunrise."