Weird HDD/CDRom Problem

[JW9T69]

ECS K7VZA M/B
Athlon 1.1GHz CPU
512mb PC133 ram (2x256)
WD 60GB hard drive
Yamaha 16x10x40 CD-RW
Raite 8X DVD
Delta 50x CD
Triple boot 98SE/98SE/ME

The delta cd drive quit working(it was slave to hdd), so, I took it out. When I rebooted my hard drive would not detect.
It is jumpered correctly(primary master), both the power and the ribbon cable are installed correctly. It is not a big problem, I just moved the dvd drive to primary slave and it booted up without any problems.

It just puzzles me as to why it wouldn't boot up without the primary slave attached.
Any ideas why?

 

[Shadow2531]

even though the hard drive was setup right, I had the same problem with a computer that I was working on. So guess what I did, I took the master/slave jumper off of the hard drive and threw it(the jumper) away and all my problems went away.

It's worth a try.

For some hard drives it's kind of like you are only suppose to set the jumper to master when there is a slave. I kind of see the logic in it though. If there is only one ide device on a ide channel why would you need to set it as master if there isn't a slave. In my case, taking the jumper off put the drive in "i am all alone" configuration. Even the hard drive manual will probablyt tell you to do it the way you have it. Ignore the manual and stick to what works.

 

[swwelsh]

Almost all Western Digitals have a different setting for single drive and master drive. I would leave the hard drive by itself and put both cd drives on the secondary channel. If you have an 80 wire IDE cable for the hard drive you are slowing it down putting a cd drive on the same channel.

 

[Paul D]

"If you have an 80 wire IDE cable for the hard drive you are slowing it down putting a cd drive on the same channel."

Are you sure. I've been led to believe that's no longer true.


"I would leave the hard drive by itself and put both cd drives on the secondary channel."

Just don't try burning straight from CD to CDRW under this scenario, unless you have a burn-proof CDRW.

 

[ibdewey]

We had a 60 GB Maxtor drive that we put into a new system and could only get it to read 30 GB. I started to think they had mislabeled the drive. The customer ended up calling Maxtor and they had him change the jumper a few and finally got it to read the entire drive. They said there was actually a couple of ways to jumber the drive has master, and depending on the motherboard you may have to change it around. So I would agree with Shadow2531 and say to mess with the jumpers some because that is most likely where your problem is.