hi all i am having a problem fitting a 2nd hard disc to my mates pc its an old pc but running win xp it has about 400mb ram and 450 mhz processor, yes 450mhz lol, i am trying to add a second hard drive but windows doesnt recognise it, if i go into cmos it tells me the drive is there and says what size it is and everything but it just wont recognise it when i come back out of the bios stuff.
could the system not be able to handle the second drive its 20 gb if it makes a difference.
i am starting to wonder if it has been updated to service pack 2 should this make a differance at all?

thanks for your help
simon

Hey Simon,

Should be able to handle the drive ok, but where did the 2nd HDD come from, I doubt it's new being 20gb. When you say Windows doesn't recognise it, it doesn't appear in Device Manager?

hi no the drive is not new i got it from another pc that was scrap, it works fine i formated it on my system before i knew what i woul;d be using it for.

i am starting to think that the primary drive is set to cable select or something cos it work great in my system

Have you set jumper on drive to slave?Have you gone to device manager and scaned for hardware changes?I take its an IDE HDD as its an old pc?Is it connected to the IDE lead wich connects to the mainboard and main hard drive?maybe update IDE cable for a new one?Main HDD must be first on IDE cable the slave must be on last connector on Ide cable.

Also, just to confirm, you didn't happen to format it from a newer PC did you? Also, you really do need to confirm if the drive appears in Device Manager (requested in my initial reply).

hi yes it was formated from a newer pc i will check the device manager tomorrow when i see the pc again
thanks
simon