Drives??????? WHat to do with them!

[Azman 0]

Hello there.

 

Right I'm not being thick but I think I have a prob and don't know how to go about sorting it.

 

Story so far: I have recently bought my mates computer. When I got it I transfered my HDD and CD RW drive to the case which already had a 40GB HDD and a DVD Drive. I formatted the drive, installed XPpro and have not had a problem since. 2wks ago I bought a liteon DVD DL RW drive.

 

Here's the problem. I have taken the Liteon and set to master. The old dvd drive has been set to slave and th CDRW removed.

On startup it does all the checks gets to verifying data..... then goes to Boot from CD..... Not to XP as per usual. Now If i disconnect the DVD drive and leave just the liteon connected No probs and vice versa.

 

HELP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

PLEASE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I'M GOING MAD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

I really cannot figure this one out.

 

AZMAN

 

[peterh 1]

You shouldn`t have set the DVD to master as the PC expects the master drive to be the boot drive. The HD should be master and others as slave, you could add the DVD to secondary IDE line as master.

[jmmijo 1]

I gathered that this user did connect the optical drives to the secondary controller port however it's possible that the boot order in the BIOS is incorrect. So double check that the boot order is set to boot from the HD first now that the OS is installed. This means if you ever need to boot from a CD then you need to adjust this once more

 

 

[Azman 0]

Sorry! It looks wrong the way I have written it.

 

IDE1 - 40GB HDD (XP Drive)

8GB HDD

 

IDE2 - Liteon DVD DL

Samsung DVD Drive THis is the one I am having the problem with or poss both.

 

Sorry I explained it wrong.

 

 

 

[Azman 0]

Hello Jimmijo.

 

The bios is currently set so that it boots

 

1. HDD

2. HDD

3. Floppy

 

I thought that it might have been the case but it proved me wrong. See why this is doing my head in yet.

 

Cheers

 

[jmmijo 1]

OK, then the other possiblity is that the Samsung DVD reader does not like to be jumpered as the SLAve drive. Try swapping the jumpers around and make the DVD-RW drive the SLAve drive and the Samsung DVD reader as the MASter drive.

[VBScab 0]

Master and Slave went out in the late 1800s, didn't it?

 

Find the jumper slots on each drive which sets it (them) to use Cable Select (probably marked as 'CS' on the circuit board beneath the relevant jumper block). Then your booting drive (drive 0) goes at the end of the IDE cable (hopefully marked as 'Drive 0'), the other HD then goes on the remaining connector. DVD drive goes on the end of the IDE cable from the secondary controller.

 

Beware of leaving connectors on the Master position when other drives are set to use CS. I just played that game trying to fix a non-booting drive and the machine would cycle between seeing both drives (including the one set as Master), then seeing only the CS drive. PC would restart, go back to seeing both drives, restart, see only one. Restart....you get the picture. Switching all drives to CS fixed that. I can't recall ever seeing this advice elsewhere, so maybe I was unlucky. All I know is that it was 100% repeatable.

[VBScab 0]

Master and Slave went out in the late 1800s, didn't it?

 

Find the jumper slots on each drive which sets it (them) to use Cable Select (probably marked as 'CS' on the circuit board beneath the relevant jumper block). Then your booting drive (drive 0) goes at the end of the IDE cable (hopefully marked as 'Drive 0'), the other HD then goes on the remaining connector. DVD drive goes on the end of the IDE cable from the secondary controller.

 

Beware of leaving connectors on the Master position when other drives are set to use CS. I just played that game trying to fix a non-booting drive and the machine would cycle between seeing both drives (including the one set as Master), then seeing only the CS drive. PC would restart, go back to seeing both drives, restart, see only one. Restart....you get the picture. Switching all drives to CS fixed that. I can't recall ever seeing this advice elsewhere, so maybe I was unlucky. All I know is that it was 100% repeatable.

[DosFreak 2]

CS doesn't work for some HD/controller combinations. So in those cases you will have to set set Master/Slave.

[noorman 0]

CS is from the professional world.

 

If the controller doesn't support it and you don't have IDE cables for CS use, CS won't work !!!

 

In 'home' desktops, Master & Slave is still in use, except when using SATA drives ...