Western Digital Hard Drive Detection Problem

[Corduroy]

I've been running a system since last January with an Epox 8KHA motherboard and a Western Digital 40 Gigabyte drive. I originally had the single drive set with no jumper at all, as it was a single master.

I just purchased a Western Digital 80 Gigabyte with the 8MB buffer, quite nice. I've tried to make it the slave on the primary IDE chain, but doing so causes both Western Digital drives to be unrecognizable to the BIOS. I set the 40 GB to master with the single jumper and the 80 GB to slave. Nothing.

The drive is good since it works fine when I connected it to another system, so that's not the problem. What can I do to make these drives function together on this system? Should I move drives around in regard to how they are hooked into the two IDE chains? I have a DVD drive and CD-Writer on the secondary IDE chain.

Help me please!:confused:

[Wiggo]

Now I hope ya have the master drive in the end connector of the IDE cable but maybe the new drive would rather be the master, having the new HDD as the master and the os on it would be better for performance anyway. If you have the master attached to the middle connector this will cause probs.
Don't mix the HDD's with the ROM drives as this will reduce performance drastically. :smokin:
<center>:cheers:</center>

[Corduroy]

I have the master on the end connector and the slave on the middle connector. It may say newbie under my name, but that's not a true reflection of my knowledge.

I bought this 80GB drive to be a massive media storage drive since I work with movies and music a lot and am moving that data around quite a bit. I'd really prefer to keep the 40GB as the OS disk and just use the 80 for storage purposes.

Is this a problem with WD drives or a problem with my EpOX motherboard?

[Wiggo]

Wasn't meaning any offence by statin' the obvious before but it's a mistake I find made by a lot who's PC's wind up here for trouble shootin' and some of them know better. :smokin:
Does the 80GB drive get found when connected alone as master to the board? :?:
<center>:cheers:</center>

[Corduroy]

No offense taken and thanks for the tip. I just was going to attempt to put both drives as CS and i accidently put the OS drive on the secondary and the 80 gb on the primary connector of the cable and windows booted normally and things seem to be working.

Is this okay or am I just asking for trouble with a setup like this?

[Wiggo]

If it's working for you then go with it. :thumb:

[Corduroy]

Does having this drive on the second spot reduce its performance or anything?

[Wiggo]

You'll only get the performance of the slowest drive on the channel anyway. Are you experiencing any probs with it like that? :?:
<center>:cheers:</center>

[Mr. C]

Congratulations Corduroy!
That ought to be a sweet drive, I have my eye out for one myself.

It's not an uncommon thing for a WD drive to fail being recognized properly. Most often setting the jumper to the ONLY drive position remedies the situation.
I have no clue as to why that is, but it has always worked for me.
Setting to only drive has always resulted in the placement on the IDE cable to determine whether the drive is Slave or Master, and has never limited the channel to only be used for 1 drive in my experience.

A rather silly, annoying quirk the first time you encounter it, but it works using those parameters:?:

[Wiggo]

There are plenty of things that I've seen with computers that technically shouldn't have worked but have and things that should work not do so. I personally think that it's the huge range of various hardware combinations that we have now that have thrown wildcard factors in to make life if not interesting definately a challenge. : peace2:
<center>:cheers:</center>

[Mr. C]

And that's just 1 of the reasons we love it so:D

[zeradul]

It may say newbie under my name, but that's not a true reflection of my knowledge.

Haha!
No comment. :D :D

[Mr. C]

I take it you 2 are acquainted IRL:?:

[tsunami_jp]

u have to put it to cable select, then should not have any problem..

ur 80g hdd have a clicking sound or not when u power up ur computer?????

wait for ur answer, because my one have a clicking sound then after that all is working fine......

[Corduroy]

Sorry Zeradul, maybe I'm only a newbie when compared with the great welath of computer knowledge that you hold, but I believe I can hold my own. I've done my share of building and installing and although I may break things, I get the job done.

Latest system out of the Corduroy shop:

Athlon XP 1800
ePox 8KHA+
256MB DDR Micron
WD 400 HDD
Samsung 24x10x40
Samsung 16x/48x DVD
GeForce 2 MX
17" Samsung Monitor
Netgear FA311 (only one chip on these NICs, better than yours)
Enermax 330w PSU
Enermax Black Server Case



HA HA HA HA