Hi all,

Here's an interesting one. I have two hard drives in my self-built (first mistake) system. I have two hard drives, a Hitachi 500gb and a WD 250gb. I want to set the Hitachi as master and the WD as slave. The operating system is on the Hitachi (C: drive).

When I first boot up, the BIOS recognizes the WD drive, but not the Hitachi drive. It then gives me a boot error. I then reboot.

On the second boot, the BIOS recognizes both drives, but I get a boot error. So I go into the BIOS to check the hard drive boot priority, and find that the BIOS had automatically placed the WD drive ahead of the Hitachi drive in priority. I then move the Hitachi ahead in the boot drive priority, Save and Exit, and things boot up fine.

This issue occurs on every single boot (the Hitachi is first not recognized, then it shows up second in the boot priority).

I don't believe it's a power supply problem. I have a 480 watt supply, and according to all of the calculator sites I've checked, I should only need 355 tops. I have tried putting both drives on separate IDE cables. I have tried putting them on different lines to the power supply. I have changed the jumpers from Master/Slave to Cable Select and back again. I've checked the power supply output, and the stats seem fine. If I only hook up either the WD or the Hitachi, the system runs fine. Just not with both.

Does anyone have any other suggestions? I'm at the end of my rope!

Thanks,

Rick

Hey Punster,

Welcome to PCHF. We have a great group of techs here and I am sure that we will be able to help you get this working.

If you ONLY have the Hitachi plugged in does the bios recognize it?

Looking forward to your reply,

TTFN

LGW

Yup, the Hitachi drive works just fine all by itself. As does the WD...

Try the setup like this:

Place the Hitachi at the end of the primairy IDE channel , and its jumper as master.
Then place the WD as slave also on the primairy IDE channel , with its jumper as slave.

Then boot youre pc in your bios , and see if the drive are automaticly detected there , if not then manuall select them. And set the bootorder to boot from: A: floppie B:cd/dvd C:HD (primairy) D: (if present to select) nothing.