hdd and cdrom on ide

[nick5449]

Can a hard drive and a cd/dvd drive be on the same IDE cable? Or do they need to be on seperate ones?

 

[SirKenin]

They CAN be, but they should be on seperate ones.

 

[nick5449]

When I try to do it i get a "boot system disk failure" error. Does it matter what size of IDE cables they're on (40 vs 80...if those are the right numbers)?

 

[SirKenin]

You must have a custom built IBM drive interface (I don't know.. ask PC Eye).

No, seriously... That means that your harddrive doesn't have Windows installed, or if it does your Master Boot Record is messed up, or possibly even the Master File Table is toast.

Do you have Windows installed fully already? Just to try something, set your HDD as master and set your boot order as 1) HDD, 2) CDROM, 3) Floppy. Just to see if it boots.

Another thing you can try is unplugging the CDROM (BOTH power AND cable) and see if it boots then...

Let me know and we'll go from there with other ideas.

I do know that some HDDs don't like being on the same cable as an optical drive. It makes no sense to me, but I've run into it a few times.

 

[The_Other_One]

Did you set the jumpers on the drives accordingly? And is everything setup in the bios correctly, or to auto detect?

 

[chrisalviola]

When I try to do it i get a "boot system disk failure" error. Does it matter what size of IDE cables they're on (40 vs 80...if those are the right numbers)?

check the jumpers if its on the primary or slave both cant be the same.