2nd HDD

im tring to put a 2nd hard drive into my computer, right now the computer has a western digital 40g, the hard drive i am trying to instal is a WD 20g, it is from my other computer that broke. the 40g is the master and the 20g is the slave, but when i turn the computer on i get a error and i cant see the 20g hdd when got to my computer. i am also cannot see the secound cd drive i just installed.

Are the two hard drives on the same cable? Maybe move the hard drive to the cable the CD-ROM is on? Also ensure that the master 40gb drive doesn't have a setting 'Master and no slave'. Quite a few drives have that setting and it will cause the slave drive to not appear.

do you mean the cable w/ the working cd drive on it?
yes they both have a master and slave jumper.

I would recommend that you install one thing at a time, for ease of troubleshooting. For both devices, after installing them, see if they are detected in BIOS. What OS are you using?

i have win xP home.
yes both HDDs are detected in BIOS.

a.koepke suggested that you put the hard drive on the same cable as the CD-ROM drive. I would advise against this if at all possible. The CD-ROM drive is much slower than a hard drive, and if you are accessing both devices at the same time, performance will suffer.

Start from scratch and try this:

1. Connect a known good IDE cable to the first IDE channel on your motherboard.
2. On the very end of this cable, connect the 40GB hard drive and set it as master
3. On the middle connector, connect the 20BG hard drive and set it to slave

4. On the second IDE channel, connect another known good IDE cable
5. On the very end of this cable, connect the CD-ROM drive and set it as master

Although you said the drives were detected in BIOS, that doesn't always mean they are enabled (my motherboard and a few others I've had work this way). If you have an "Auto Detect" setting, select that for all four channels.

The fact that you use Windows XP is good - you won't have any troubles in that operating system.

a.koepke made a good point, though: ensure the Master setting isn't a "Master Only - No Slave" setting. If you want, give the model numbers of your drives and so I can get spec on them, and I'll help you more if you need it...

ok, the model#are
WD400EB-75pf0
WD200EB-11csf0.
i tryed puting the master on the end of the cable and the slave in the middle, but it dosnt help, so i switched them and it still does the same thing.
oh and i am geting an error on startup saying A drive error.

Well, where each drive is connected doesn't really matter - I just gave you that checklist so that we all know how it's connected.

Those drives are easy to configure - here's what you need: http://support.wdc.com/techinfo/gen...umpers.asp#eide. You need to set one drive to the picture labeled "Dual (Master)" and the other drive to the picture labeled "Dual (Slave)".

I'd also like to suggest that you try Western Digital's Data LifeGuard Tools to diagnose each drive (look for a floppy creator). I don't think either of them are bad, but it's good to check so you don't wonder.

Is the floppy drive cable reversed? Ribbon cables have a twist towards one end - that is the end that should be connected to the floppy drive. It should also only fit one way. If not, it won't cause damage if it's backwards, so it's safe to run the trial-and-error method.

ok, thats were had the jumpers, on dual master and dual slave. and i put them on the cable select, that dosnt work either...

Some cables don't support cable select. Cable select is used to determine which drive is master and which is slave based on where each drive is connected on a cable.

Well, looks like you had everything correct, so I have no other suggestions. It's hard to say when I am not in front of the computer, you know?

Does the 2nd drive show up in the Disk Management area? (Control panel->Administrative tools->Computer management->Disk Management) You probably need to partition the drive so that windows can use it.

yes i was just going to post that it was in the device manager. it is formating right now!!!!
ok thank you all so much its showing up!!!!!!!!!!!