Hard drive makes computer lock up?

Hey guys. I have an extra hard drive with some backups on it that I need to get to, no OS anymore. Usually I leave it in a box unplugged. When I tried hooking it up last night it made itself the master drive, and so I couldn't start XP. It dosn't have a regular thing for changing from master to slave, so I don't know what to do? I used to be able to start up XP with my main drive, then plug that one in and XP would automatically detect it, but now I scaned it with partition software and it has some errors in the FAT, so I can't do anythng with it there. So when I'm in XP and I plug it in, the system just locks up untill I unplug it. It tries to detect the settings but can't I guess. So, how can I access this harddrive?
I was trying to run checkdisk on it but I think I need it on a disk I'm not too knowledgeable with DOS.

Hi MoparMurdoc,

Have you looked carefully on the drive for jumper settings? They should be something like Master, Slave and Cable Select. I have seen some drives with the jumpers directly on the controller card (pc board attached to the drive).

It sounds like you might be attaching the drive with the computer running. Make sure your computer is off when attaching and removing drives. Then boot your computer to see if it detects it.

Tom

assuming it is an IDE harddrive, plugging it in when the computer is running is not a good idea. IDE is not hot-swappable. you may of fried the controller board or the internal IDE controller on your mobo. have you tried plugging it into your second IDE cable or replacing the CD with it to try it?

Oh... Well, it used to work. I guess I won't try that again.
But the controller is fine, because I just hooked up my old configuration again, which is 3 hard drives and a CD (and the floppy), and everything works.
Ah... looking at it now I found the jumper, wow i feel dumb. its the smallest jumper I've ever seen, kinda blends in. its on the chip board instead of the usual spot at the back of the drive.