IDE Wont read new large hard drive

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frankiee

New Member
I am trying to put a 60 GB Maxtor hard drive into an old P-2 350 MHz computer and the computer will not read the hard drive.
Is it because it is too big?
I thought if it was too big it would read it but it would only use a partial area of it.
I put the old 6 GB hard drive in and it reads it no problem.
Thanks
 
No it is not reformated and I dont know what initialized is.
Its my sister in laws old hard drive, which had XP home on it, and we got it for nothing so we want to reformat it.
We plug it into IDE port 1 and have it set as a master and it will not read that it is there. It will read that the CD burner in hooked into the IDE port 2.
We hook up the old 6 Gig HD, with 98SE, and it will read that it is there.
The new hard drive is a:
Maxtor DiamondMax 16 ATA133 60 GB
 
Ok, I trust it is receiving power from a molex connector. That said, you say it will not read that it is there. Do you mean when you enter the BIOS it doesn't display? Or are you trying to boot your sister in law's XP on your machine? If not in the BIOS, what is the error message that you see?

Sorry for all the questions, I just need to find out more details.
 
I think the "molex" connector is the 4 wire. I think it is working because the old HD works.
Yes I am trying to put Sis in laws old HD on our machine because we want a 60 GB in it.
I dont know the exact things that are happening because my wife was doing it.
I have to go now but I will be home with my wife tonite at which time I will have exact info for you.
I thank you for your help and hope I am not to vauge.
I will have exact info for you tonite
 
I'm willing to bet the harddrive is formatted with NTFS (default for windows XP) and the old PC is running some older version of windows which can only read FAT drives.
 
Cromewell said:
I'm willing to bet the harddrive is formatted with NTFS (default for windows XP) and the old PC is running some older version of windows which can only read FAT drives.
Click to expand...
That most likely is the problem, but the BIOS should still detect the drive.
 
frankiee said:
I am trying to put a 60 GB Maxtor hard drive into an old P-2 350 MHz computer and the computer will not read the hard drive.
Is it because it is too big?
Click to expand...
No... probably because your old PII is a POS. I had an old PII 350 and it detected 3 80GB HD's.

frankiee said:
I thought if it was too big it would read it but it would only use a partial area of it.
Click to expand...
Depends on what you mean by it being read. Is it the BIOS or Windows reading it? Win'95 and Win'98 have issues with large HD's, your BIOS shouldn't.

frankiee said:
I put the old 6 GB hard drive in and it reads it no problem.
Thanks
Click to expand...
Probably because that's what came with this system.

frankiee said:
The new hard drive is a:Maxtor DiamondMax 16 ATA133 60 GB
Click to expand...
One issue may be the fact that your new HD is ATA133. I'd be willing to bet that the old one is ATA100 as well as your CD burner if it originally came with the system.

frankiee said:
We plug it into IDE port 1 and have it set as a master and it will not read that it is there. It will read that the CD burner in hooked into the IDE port 2.
Click to expand...
Again... is it the BIOS or Windows that's not reading the HD? Did you try throwing in the Windows cd and do a new installation? Your system will have issues booting if you're just trying to throw your in-laws HD into your old system. First off... different motherboard, which means different standards and most likely all new drivers. It most likely won't run because there are too many drivers that need to be reinstalled and updated.

frankiee, my guess is that if you throw in the windows cd, do a new install, and your system doesn't see the 60GB HD there, then there's a compatibility issue with the ATA133 HD and the motherboard. Your motherboard may have two sets of IDE slots, one for ATA133 and another for ATA100, it may not. It may need a flash bios update. It may just need some BIOS configurations.

Let us know when you get home and hopefully we can help you out in some way.
 
Im home.
Thank you every one for everybodys answers.
When I turn on the computer it just goes to the "QDI" spash screen. (I guess that is the BIOS manufacturer)
It just hangs there forever so I hit the delete key and it goes in to the BIOS.
There is no mention of the hard drive in the BIOS.
I go to the "IDE HDD AUTO DETECTION" and when I hit enter it just hangs there forever so I hit "escape" and it does nothing so I hit "control; alt; delete" and it restarts.

On the mother board I see no other places to put the IDE cables in.
I dont know what "flash BIOS update" is or "BIOS configurations"

I am thinking now that if it is not a simple installation then I will just use the old HD in the comp and save the 60GB for my other computer. It is a AMD Sempron 2500
I dont know why I would need a 40GB and a 60GB in my home computer but the price is right (free)
Thanks
 
Cromewell said:
There was no mention of the BIOS, only the computer not being able to read it.
Click to expand...
Maybe so, but if the BIOS doesnt detect the drive then that could mean theres a problem with the drive.
 
frankiee said:
There is no mention of the hard drive in the BIOS.
Click to expand...
It should list all of you IDE devices when booting up. Does it show your cd burner?

frankiee said:
I dont know what "flash BIOS update" is or "BIOS configurations"
Click to expand...
Flash BIOS are usually found at the website of the manufacturer of your motherboard. It's basically a little application that you run to expand the capabilities and limitations on your motherboard and fixes a couple of bugs they found.

My guess is that you're setting the jumpers for MASTER and SLAVE incorrectly. Different manufacturers have different jumper settings for their drives.
 
Jumpers, jumpers, jumpers! Make sure the jumpers on both drives are set up right, either Master/Slave or properly placed for Cable Select.
Tom
 
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