17 Gig Maxtor Drive, No Go

[Harry Murphy]

I have installed a second hard drive but can't get it to boot. After I reset the jumpers to Master and Slave, I installed the 17 gig Maxtor drive as Master but could not get the computer to boot up. I used the Windows 95 startup disk as well as the Maxter Maxblast software but could not even get the floppy drive to be recognized. I called up Maxtor and they are not sure what it is. Does anyone have any idea? I am using American Megatrends Bios version 1.3. on a TX pro-II mainboard.

[Nathan]

Does it see either hard drive correctly in CMOS or when it boots up? Try booting each by themselves. Sometimes hard drives don't like each and won't work at all together.

Let us know.

Computer Help Page
www.helponthe.net/nathan (http://www.helponthe.net/nathan)

[Harry Murphy]

Yes, my regular drive works fine by itself
when I have it on my regular jumper settings as the Master drive when the Maxtor Drive is not connected. When the Maxtor Drive is connected and I change the jumper to Master for the Maxtor Drive then I can't boot up.
If I try to run just the Maxtor drive and disconnect the Fujitsu drive, the Maxtor still will not boot.
The Maxtor is powering up because I can hear it so the power plug is working.
I wonder if there is something I am doing wrong with the cabling from the board to the drive. Maybe I don't even have the right cables. I had to purchase a different set because there was a pinhole missing in the cabling end port and the connecting port on the PC needed all the pins to plug into it. I also have no idea which is right side up for the cable plug since twisting it around allows the plug to fit in equally well.
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Does it see either hard drive correctly in CMOS or when it boots up? Try booting
each by themselves. Sometimes hard drives don't like each and won't work at all
together.

Let us know.

[Bleeding Edge]

Pin 1 on ribbon cables are mark by a colored strip (usually red) along on side (data wire) of the cable.

Pin 1 on the drives is usaully identified by the label on top of the drive. And/or if you look the underside of the drive or where the black plastic housing for the connector pins, there will a triangle or the number 1 on one edge.

I take it that the operating system is still on the Fujitsu drive correct? If this is the case, the Fujitsu drive is the bootable drive. On many motherboards the drive with the operating system must be connected as the Master. Also, it is designated by FDISK as the Active (boot) partition And there can only be one.
This is the reason you may not be able to boot when you change the Maxtor to work as the Master.

Furthermore, when you have only the Maxtor connected as the Master drive, the system will not boot be cause it is a new drive without an operating system. ALSO, the drive needs to be FDISKed and Formated from a bootable system floppy.

Now the Maxtor drive, as Nathan mentioned, does not work as a slave drive to some other manufacturer's drives (this may only be true for older drives). I know for certain Seagate is on of them. If this is the situation with your orginal drive (we'll try to rule it out in a moment) Your going to have to put the OS on the Maxtor and make the Fujitsu (will need to be FDISK because it reads as C drive) the Slave.

So, you have some choices to make and their options.

1. See if you can (or even want to) set up the Maxtor as the Slave.

To do this you connect it the drives and jumpers accordingly and boot from a system floppy with the FDISK and Format utility on them. -Should be on the system disk already.-
Run FDISK to create and set logical drives, partions, etc. Run Format to format the drive. -you'll need to reboot from the floppy once more- Then check the BIOS setting for the drive.

2.Set up the Maxtor as the Master. -If you want to (or have to) set the Maxtor as the Master, your going to have to do a little more and it means re-installing Windows.

First let's see if the drives working. Disconnect the Fujitsu and Set the jumper for the Maxtor to Master. Boot from the floppy and FDISK and Format as above. This time you need to set the active partion.
Check the BIOS settings. Re-install the OS.


You'll encounter a couple obstacles you need to manuever around:

1.The size of the drive.
2.The best way to get your files off the orginal drive.


Notes:

Remember there can't be an active partion on each drive meaning ther can't be two C: drives.

You usaully can take the jumper off the Master drive (it should default as the master) or use CSL (Cable SeLect)jumper pins for either master or (usaully for)slave.