curtis73

Long story, but I'll try to condense it.

Laptop HD has bad sectors and won't boot XP
Bought a 2.5 to 3.5 IDE adapter kit
Put the 2.5 in a desktop to try and salvage data.
Read owner's manual for ASUS motherboard.
Connected the 2.5 IDE to the grey (slave) connector on the ribbon, and the 3.5 to its original black (master) connector.
put jumper on the middle pegs of the 3.5 to assign it as "master with slave present"
Desktop won't boot. It says there is no HD at all.
Disconnect 2.5, boots fine
Went to Western Digital website and looked at their instructions for assigning the 2.5 as a slave.
Tried assigning 2.5 as slave, nothing.

So far I've tried assigning cable select (which I didn't expect to work with my 40-ribbon), tried assigning master and slave, tried assigning nothing, tried everything I can think of. Whenever the 2.5 is connected, I get the "insert boot media and press any key." If I go to bios setup it only shows me the floppy and DVD drives; no HDs installed at all.

No matter what happens, if the 2.5 is connected in any way, the board won't recognize any HD at all. I'm just tired of plugging and unplugging stuff, and being a novice I'm sure I'll fry something one of these times so I need advice/guidance before I continue.

How do I hook it up? The 2.5 IDE is a western digital scorpio 250g. The 3.5 IDE (which is the only HD normally in the desktop) is a western digital caviar 250g. The desktop is running XP pro SP3. The motherboard is an ASUS P4C800. It has two channels for IDE; should I try putting the slave on channel 2 with another ribbon?

Another question. Both IDE drives have that one missing pin, and the ribbon connector is missing a hole so you don't get it backwards. The 2.5-3.5 adapter I have has all the pins, so I had to bend the corresponding pin out of the way so the ribbon could plug in... is that right? I'm sure I got the right pin, and it doesn't hook to anything on the 2.5 end.