Abit Be-6 Motherboard

[Oldtimer]

A new computer PIII/500 with Be-6 Motherboard
and 13 gig DMA66 H/d. I happened to have a
left over 2.1gig HD WD Caviar, which I decided to install as a Slave drive. ATI drivers installed, and with only the C drive installed- system runs great.
I was amazed to look at the set up and CMOS
setup and no HD identified or listed, not even the AUTO setting- but things working ok.
When I tried to set up the second hard drive as a slave, the set up found and identified the second hard drive, but the system would only run to "VERIFY DMI DATA POOL" and would
hang. Since I was trying as a slave drive and did not work, I went to empty drive port
and set up the second hard drive, this time it could not find the second hard drive, giving diagnostic as 2nd hard drive failure. and once again hang up on the VERIFY DMI etc"
I contacted Tec Support from the place of purchase and they pleaded ignorance and no knowledge. My understanding is that the DMA66 is downward compatible and should not be a problem.
I feel sure I am missing something simple, so how about some assistance? I am still confused about the lack of identification in the SETUP CMOS for a drive that is working perfectly. What gives????? "Oldtimer"

[Target]

Not 100% sure that DMA66 controllers are "backward compatible" with the DMA33's....... have you tried to place your 2.1Gig WD drive on one of the DMA33 IDE controllers as a Master leaving the new one on the DMA66 controller as a Master as well? You might want to try that and see if you can get your bios to recognize both of them properly.

If you can, and it holds, then I would make sure to re-FDISK the 2.1Gig drive as well and remove the active partition, and then repartition it. Have personally had some flaky things happen when two drives in the same system have active partitions.

~Good luck

[Oldtimer]

Thanks for the suggestion, but I did try a conventional DMA33 slot, and the same results as a Master drive. Could identify the drive but hangs on VERIFY DMI DATA POOL. The second drive has been reformatted without partition, with still same results. The boot up screen which shows, floppy drives etc, shows A drive etc, but even the 13gig HD which is working is not listed on the bootup screen. Many thanks for your interest and reply. Another idea or ideas out there ?? "Oldtimer"

[Target]

Again, I'd go back to two things here.....
(1) make sure the jumpers are set correctly for the two drives (master/slave/cs) and that the cables are installed correctly.

(2) remove the active partition from the smaller drive using FDISK. If that drive was the primary drive in a system before being installed in the new one, its likely going to have an active partition.

Two active partitions (one on each of the two physical disks) will both be telling the CMOS that THEY are the boot drive. Its very possible that the CMOS doesn't know which drive to take its "orders" from or which to boot from. CMOS is a fairly simple program and it cannot resolve these types of conflicts.

After FDISK-ing to remove the active partition, you will have to reformat the smaller drive too, but you should be able to then get the CMOS to auto detect both drives, and get past the verification of the DMI pool stage of boot-up.

[Oldtimer]

Thanks to all for the suggestions, problem finally solved and second h/d installed very easily when you find out how. In the Setup just go to intergrated peripherals screen and disable the enabled on the second IDE drive.
Unless you are using ultra dma 66 on both drives, but for a convential dma33 drive in the second master or what ever, change listing from enabled to disabled, this applies to the black set of sockets for the hard drive, which allows dma33 to be the mode on the black sockets. The white sockets for DMA66 first IDE Driver.. "Oldtimer"