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Hard Drive FAQ
Basic Problems IDE:
Before listing problems, here is a list of the very basics. 2-5 also apply to any drive EG: CD-Rom, CD-RW.
1)Use ATA 66/100 80 wire 40 pin cables. Install the OS drive as master on IDE0(primary master)
2)Make sure it has power to it as well as a ribbon cable. the red wire on the 4 pin power cable will be toward the
ribbon cable.
3)Make sure your ribbon cable is tightly inserted into both the Motherboard and HD. The red(or colored) side will
be toward the power cable. Most motherboards are "keyed" as well as the ribbon cable so you can't wire wrong.
If its not check the manual for the #1 pin which is the red(colored) wire. CHECK your cables again to be sure they
are inserted properly, some will require a bit of pressure.
4)Plug the END of your cable into the MASTER DRIVE only. NO EXCEPTIONS (other than older ata/33 boards/drives).
If there is a Slave drive it MUST go in the MIDDLE of the cable.
5)When installing a HD on the END of the cable be sure to set the jumpers on the HD to Master, when installing in the MIDDLE
make sure you set the jumpers on the drive to Slave
Problem:HD not recognized in Bios.
Answer:If there are 2 drives on the same cable they may both be set to slave or master. Another possible answer is
to check your bios settings, many Motherboards require you to detect the drive in the bios first.
Problem:Bios sees it windows don't.
Answer: Drive is not Formatted (see below), also see above.
Jumper settings for various drives:
Maxtor D740-540X
Maxtor Diamond Max Plus (all)
IBM: jumper settings are on the drive Use the Logical 16 Head settings.
How to Fdisk:
If Your loading an OS on the drive, Windows 98/ME/2K/XP will automatically Fdisk and format.
However should you need to FDisk here is how.
Insert a Win 98 Boot Disk into floppy,,start system, choose start without
CD-Rom support. Once you have a "A Prompt" type
fdisk, answer yes to enable large disk support. you then come to a screen with 4 or 5 options,
choose option 1, then option 1 again. after its first run thru it will ask you if you want to use all
available space?, answer yes if you are not partitioning into more than 1 partition, for multiple partitions
answer no.
Formatting:
Get to an "A Prompt" same as above. then type Format X: , X being your drive letter, which for your OS disk would be C:,
if your unsure of the drive letter you can go into Fdisk and choose option 4 to view all drives and letter assignments.
Formatting for Audio drives: same as above only type Format X: /Z:64. DO NOT use this on your C drive.
