slave hard drive trouble

Bramp

Bramp

Member
I recently added a slave hard drive, and I knew nothing of what I was doing. I just searched the net and figured it out. Any ways I am having a black screen when I start up that says. “a problem with your hard drive has been detected consult your owners manual” It does not specify which drive the slave or the primary, I suspect it’s the slave since I just added it. I looked in my owners manual, it says to do the troubleshooter on the computer. It said to check the volume for errors, well I did that and am still having the black screen. KEEP IN NOTE! That the computer boots up after I press enter and both the primary and slave drive work fine, so why am I getting this black screen at startup?

Thanks guys for any help, your so good! LMAO

Bramp....
 
suprasteve said:
if it's ide, you sure you have the jumpers set correctly?
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How would I know if it is IDE, I used the jumper settings supplied with the drive. Is it possible that my computer may need different jumper settings then what the drive said?

Bramp...

P.S the new drive (slave), is used, off a part out computer.....
 
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well the drive is most likely either ide or sata, if it has a 40 pin connection on the back for the data then it's ide and the jumper needs to be set to slave. If it is sata (lesslikely but still quite possible) the connection will be about a half inch long and will have a solid piece with contacts on it for a connection. Sata doesn't need jumper settings typically. Did you format the drive before installing it as your slave? If not, it is possible that windows system files are still on there and want to boot, in which case just format the drive and you should be fine
 
suprasteve said:
well the drive is most likely either ide or sata, if it has a 40 pin connection on the back for the data then it's ide and the jumper needs to be set to slave. If it is sata (lesslikely but still quite possible) the connection will be about a half inch long and will have a solid piece with contacts on it for a connection. Sata doesn't need jumper settings typically. Did you format the drive before installing it as your slave? If not, it is possible that windows system files are still on there and want to boot, in which case just format the drive and you should be fine
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Okay well im pretty sure it is IDE then... and I did format it, or maybe I partitioned it…:o lol sorry I don’t remember which one I did cause it was a couple months ago. What is the difference between partitioning and formatting:confused: I did use killdisk on it though.

Im formatting it as I type this up and will get back to you Steve..

Thanx for your time..

Bramp….
 
Okay I formatted the drive and still have the black screen error. Is it possible that the drive would still work with the wrong jumper setting? Because it does work fine. Where can I go to find out other jumper settings? I guess the settings supplied with the drive to be wrong?

Bramp....
 
well I went to this link....

http://www.wdc.com/en/library/eide/2579-001037.pdf#search='what%20jumper%20settings?'

and my settings are as in the diagram...

so now what? lol

Bramp...
 
okay here is something.. the master drive has two jumpers on it right now... and the slave only has one? is this a problem?

P.S the in the slaves drive properties it says the partition style is "Master Boot Record" is that supposed to be that way? How do i change it if need be?
 
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your jumper settings should be displayed on the drives... whichever you want to be the master (the one with the os), then make sure that the jumper is set for master or master with slave present... the other one should be set for slave... plus, it is usually better if you have both drives on the same ribbon... in fact, i have a acer that won't boot up if the drives aren't on the same ribbon...
 
Bramp said:
. What is the difference between partitioning and formatting:confused: QUOTE]



Formatting is basically deleting the entire drive (kinda - you can still recover the data if you do it on accident as long as you have another drive to boot to and you don't install anything on the newly formatted drive. I can't remeber the name of the program that I've used to do this....) anyways, that's not your question.

Partitioning is making your BIOS think you have two hard drives (or however many partitions you add - 2 partitions = 2 (virtual) hard drives) If you add a partition with a MBR (master boot record) then you can add another operating system to that partition, ie. Win XP on your first partition & Linux on your second. When you partition your drive, it will add another Drive letter. So, if your HDD is C:, then the partitioned drive will be D:.


Steve touched on this a little. If you're slaved hard drive has a master boot record, that may be where you are getting the problem. A MBR is usually the first however many sectors of a HDD that contain the boot-up information for your PC's OS. W/o this, your BIOS won't know where to find the OS.

Now, this is where this advice might not prove to help. Usually, if you have 2 boot options, it will prompt you which one you want to run, however, if you didn't reformat the slaved drive initially, or if you have formatted it and placed a MBR on it (which im unsure if you can do w/o installing an OS) then it might be confusing your pc and causing an error. I would delete the MBR on the SLAVED HDD.

One other thing, if you have SMART HDD Monitoring on your Mobo, turn it off. I have it on mine and it always reports an error. My HDD is brand new and I know thiers no problem w/ it. Sorry this was so long, hop eit helps.
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asdfguy said:
Bramp said:
. What is the difference between partitioning and formatting:confused: QUOTE]



Formatting is basically deleting the entire drive (kinda - you can still recover the data if you do it on accident as long as you have another drive to boot to and you don't install anything on the newly formatted drive. I can't remeber the name of the program that I've used to do this....) anyways, that's not your question.

Partitioning is making your BIOS think you have two hard drives (or however many partitions you add - 2 partitions = 2 (virtual) hard drives) If you add a partition with a MBR (master boot record) then you can add another operating system to that partition, ie. Win XP on your first partition & Linux on your second. When you partition your drive, it will add another Drive letter. So, if your HDD is C:, then the partitioned drive will be D:.


Steve touched on this a little. If you're slaved hard drive has a master boot record, that may be where you are getting the problem. A MBR is usually the first however many sectors of a HDD that contain the boot-up information for your PC's OS. W/o this, your BIOS won't know where to find the OS.

Now, this is where this advice might not prove to help. Usually, if you have 2 boot options, it will prompt you which one you want to run, however, if you didn't reformat the slaved drive initially, or if you have formatted it and placed a MBR on it (which im unsure if you can do w/o installing an OS) then it might be confusing your pc and causing an error. I would delete the MBR on the SLAVED HDD.

One other thing, if you have SMART HDD Monitoring on your Mobo, turn it off. I have it on mine and it always reports an error. My HDD is brand new and I know thiers no problem w/ it. Sorry this was so long, hop eit helps.
Click to expand...



I appreciate everyone’s responses, but I think asdfguy hit the nail on the head. I would like to try and delete the MBR but I don’t know how? I forgot how to get into the windows XP partitioning area?

Sorry about being so green:o lol

Bramp…..
Click to expand...
 
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