Hard Drive install question... (1 Viewer)

[Richard Travale]

Hey Kids, I just bought a new hard drive for my comp. It is a Western Digital 60G model. Anyway, THe hard drive I had before was a generic disc type 47(this is exactly what the system info read). Anyway, there were instruction with the WD as to what jumper settings made the drive a single, master, or slave. Well, I tried using it as a master and a slave but both times it was not recognized and then I realized, hey, I have to change the jumpers on the other drive. So, my question is, where would I find out what the jumpers must be set at to make the older drive a slave to my new WD and will having the older, slower and smaller drive as a slave affect the performance of my new WD?
Right now I have the new WD installed and have installed all of my software and am running that with the other HD just sitting in there taking up space.

 

[Walter Kittel]

This site should help you find the settings / jumpers for your drive:

The Tech Page, Hard Drive Jumpers and Specifications

I'm uncertain about the effect it will have on your WD60, so I won't speculate.

- Walter.

 

[Richard Travale]

Thanks for the link Walter. My only problem is that my system is a Cicero system and they do not list the manufacturer of their components. I guess I'll just sell the thing for a few bucks. It's not like there's any information that I really need that I did not already back up.

 

[Rob Gillespie]

If you have the WD up and running then I would just play around with the jumper setting on the old drive and see how you get on. Try it in a different position, boot and go straight into the BIOS - you should be able to see each drive on the two IDE channels and therefore will be able to tell what position they're in.

Really though, if you want to run both HDs, you may be better off with each being the master drive on different IDE channels. Any disk-to-disk activity is going run a bit faster than if they're both on the same channel.

 

[Tekara]

your best bet for finding out the hardrive manufacturer is on the hardrive itself. there should be some kind of manufacturer's ID or serial number on it that may be able to give you a lead on to where to go.

I will second having each hardrive on it's own channel. That would save a lot of pain and improve overall performance of the system. if you have CD-rom's you can pick up a inexpensive pci card to give you more IDE channels.

 

[Richard Travale]

Thanks for the tips guys. I will look into adding the PCI connector card and then run the 2nd HD on a different IDE channel.

 

[Rob Gillespie]

Richard, what other IDE devices are you using?

 

[David_N]

The other thing is, if your using an older computer, you may need to check around for a BIOS update. I know when I added a 40GB HDD to my P2 computer, my motherboard didn't reconize it until the BIOS upgrade was run.

Hope this helps,
David N

 

[Richard Travale]

Richard, what other IDE devices are you using?

Well, looking inside, there appears to be two IDE channels available. One is connected to the hard drive and the other goes to my CD burner.
My computer has a Pentium P3 1 gig processor. I'm not sure what the motherboard is though.

David, how do you run a BIOS update?

 

[David_N]

First you have to find out what make/model motherboard you have. If you have all your documentation to your PC parts you can find the type there also sometimes it is printed on the board itself in big BOLD LETTERS/NUMBERS(like A7N8X which is one of Asus's boards or D845GEBV2 which is an Intel motherboard).

Then go to the manufacture's website. Look for an update to your board and download it. Run the BIOS Flash according to the instructions provided in the readme or on the website. (Most require you to boot from a floppy)

The following lists links to many motherboard manufactures:
http://www.driverzone.com/bios.html

The following is a link to a motherboard/bios information program:
http://www.motherboards.org/moboidto...?filter=biosid
Click on the BIOS Wizard link and run that.