Primary Master not recognised

[Thabiso]

Hi to Ya all
I have a 20GB I just bought.It is a P3 with 800mhz.I installed Win98se on it.I have another old HDD with 850MB running on Win95.Now here is the problem when I put the 850MB as slave and set the 20GB as master my machine boots with the 850MB hdd.On bootup I can see both HDD's.When I reboot at command prompt to copy My Documents c:\ will still be the 850MB and no other drives are visible even the CD-ROM is visible.Any help will be appreciated.
Ta in advance.
What I meant to say was even the CD-Rom is not visible or recognised.

[This message has been edited by Thabiso (edited 07-29-2001).]

[randmo]

Possible Problems:
a) Is the primary dos partition on the 20gb set as active by fdisk
b) Are the jumpers set properly on the 2 drives
c) Is the master drive plugged into the last connector on the cable
d) The drives could be incompatible
e) I assume BIOS properly recognized the 20gb since you installed Win98SE
f) Check your connections
Randmo

[gothic]

Just a hunch. If the 20gig master is a Western Digital drive, make sure it's actually set to Master. WD drives have a Master, Slave, Cable Select, and Single setting.
If the drive is in 'Single' you could/will have problems with a second drive.

Hope that helps.

[TOAD6147]

Please explain the following:
When I reboot at command prompt to copy My Documents c:\ will still be the 850MB and no other drives are visible even the CD-ROM is visible.
And as gothic has indicated, ensure that the hdd jumpers are set properly for Master/Slave and that the Master is on the end of the cable and the Slave is in the middle. Actually, if I were you, I would put the 850 MB drive on the second channel with the CD-ROM as I'm sure it is much slower than the 20 GB drive. Otherwise, the performance of the 20 GB will degrade to that of the 850 MB.
By the way Gothic, most all drives have jumpers whether WD or Maxtor, or what ever.