Hard drive problems... newbie help please!

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I bought a Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 9 80GB ATA/133 hard drive yesterday, and my computer won't recognise it when I plug it in.

My motherbaord is an older one (about 3 1/2 years old), and is a Gigabyte BX-2000.

I go to that setup menu thing where the IDE HDD Auto detect is, and whenever I run this with the new HD in, it just hangs when trying to detect it.

Regardless whether I have it as Master or Slave it just won't work.


How do I fix this?


I read in another thread something about a particular cable being needed... is this the case? If so, why didn't the shop let me know this when I was buying the HD?

If I get this cable, will all other devices that I have in my computer just now still work on it, or will the cable only be for this new HD?

I need help fast, as I'm pretty sure the HD that this new one is replacing doesn't have much long left!!!
 
You will need to buy an 80-pole IDE-cable (get a round one while you are at it), which will only work on all IDE-HDs, not on CD-ROMs.

The guy in the shop probably did not know wether he was selling you a pound of cookies or a harddisk, and most OEM disks come without any cables.

Also you may need to look for an upgrade of your BIOS if the cable alone does not do the trick.
 
if this new hard drive you have is sharing a cable with another device. make sure you set the jumper on one device as master and the jumper on the other device as a slave. if you set one of the devices to cable select, your mobo might not detect your drive.
 
The latest BIOS for your mainboard (if it's not the + model) is F9 2002/1/14

I did not find info on how large harddrives it supports (and I wont download it's manual on 56k modem..)

But this you should be able to find in the manual... Or ask Gigiabyte directly....

http://tw.giga-byte.com/MotherBoard/Products/Products_GA-BX2000.htm

The 80-conductor cable enables you to use DMA modes over 33mb/s (up to 133) but it is not required, your harddrive should be backwards compatible without problems... You will just get lower performance....

I would assume this is a BIOS limitation...
 
Originally posted by Masque
Does your mobo support ATA133? If not, you may need a separate controller card.
Didn't think of that, this is what's listed on the homepage of the mobo:

I/O
2 x Ultra DMA 33 Bus Master IDE ports on board

This will reduce your performance... Buy a cheap controller board and it should work stratight away... Make sure that it supports 48-bit LBA mode (really large harddrives over 137GB..)

And don't forget that 80-pin conducator cable either.... (otherwise it will only run at 33mb/s anyway...)
 
Originally posted by degeneration
I bought a Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 9 80GB ATA/133 hard drive yesterday, and my computer won't recognise it when I plug it in.
Ultra DMA 33 should work fine with an 80GB hard drive. If your cable is not faulty, and assuming you have set the drive jumpers correctly, then you may very well have a defective drive. Try a different cable and try setting your drive to Chip Select (CS) setting.
 
Thanks for the responses.

But I'm not too clued up on the hardware side of computers... what is a controller card?

And are you saying that I don't actually need cable to get the drive to work, but it will just work with not as good performance?

And I downloaded the bios update, but when I try to update it, in the bit where it asks for the new bios file path, once I've entered it, it keeps coming up with "bios ID error"... any tips on what I'm doing wrong?
 
Re: Re: hard drive problems... newbie help please!

Originally posted by Nic
Ultra DMA 33 should work fine with an 80GB hard drive. If your cable is not faulty, and assuming you have set the drive jumpers correctly, then you may very well have a defective drive. Try a different cable and try setting your drive to Chip Select (CS) setting.

It's called Cable Select, but CS requires special hardware, set the drive alone on the cable and set it as master and it should work

But my guess is that your mobo might not supprt such large harddrives, e-mail gigabyte and ask them
 
Re: Re: Re: hard drive problems... newbie help please!

Originally posted by Per Hansson
It's called Cable Select, but CS requires special hardware, set the drive alone on the cable and set it as master and it should work

But my guess is that your mobo might not supprt such large harddrives, e-mail gigabyte and ask them

I've not known CS to require anything special over the last 3 years......I've used it on machines from 233Mhz and up without a problem. Just my end to the means I've been using.
 
Re: Re: Re: hard drive problems... newbie help please!

Originally posted by Per Hansson
It's called Cable Select ...
Sorry, my typo.
Originally posted by Masque
I've not known CS to require anything special over the last 3 years......I've used it on machines from 233Mhz and up without a problem. Just my end to the means I've been using.
You just need an 80 conductor cable for it to work (or a *special* non-standard 40 wire cable).

Check out this article ...

Configuration Using Cable Select

Configuration Using Cable Select

An alternative to the standard master/slave jumpering system used in the vast majority of PCs is the use of the cable select system. As the name implies, with this system the cable--or more correctly, which connector on the cable a device is attached to--determines which device is master and which is slave. The goal of cable select is to eliminate having to set master and slave jumpers, allowing simpler configuration.

To use cable select, both devices on the channel are set to the "cable select" (CS) setting, usually by a special jumper. Then, a special cable is used. This cable is very similar in most respects to the regular IDE/ATA cable, except for the CSEL signal. CSEL is carried on wire #28 of the standard IDE/ATA cable, and is grounded at the host's connector (the one that attaches to the motherboard or controller). On a cable select cable, one of the connectors (the "master connector") has pin #28 connected through to the cable, but the other (the "slave connector") has an open circuit on that pin (no connection). When both drives on the channel are set cable select, here's what happens:

Master: The device that is attached to the "master connector" sees the CSEL signal as grounded, because its connector has pin #28 attached to the cable, and the host's connector has that signal grounded. Seeing the "zero value" (grounded), the device sets itself to operate as master (device 0).

Slave: The drive that is attached to the "slave connector" does not see the CSEL signal as grounded, because its connector is not attached to the CSEL signal on the cable. Seeing this "no connection", the device configures itself as a slave (device 1).

If you switch the devices between the two connectors, they swap configuration, the master becoming the slave and vice-versa. Not a very complicated arrangement, and a good idea, it would seem. In fact, if cable select had actually caught on, it would have been great. The problem is that it has never been widely used, and this lack of universality has made cable select unattractive, which is a bit of a chicken and egg situation. Since cable select was never accepted in the industry, most drives come, by default, with the drive jumpered as a master or single drive. This means that to enable cable select, you have to change a jumper anyway, which obviously negates some of the advantage.

But the biggest reason why cable select never caught on was the cable itself. From the very beginning, all 40-conductor IDE/ATA cables should have been made so that they would work with cable select. There's actually no need to have different cable types, because if you set a drive to "master" or "slave" explicitly, it just ignores the CSEL setting. So a cable select cable can be used either way: regular jumpering or cable select.

Unfortunately, regular 40-conductor IDE/ATA cables don't support cable select. (Why this came about I do not know, but I suspect that some bean counter determined they could save five cents on each PC by doing this.) So to use cable select you need a special cable, and these are of course non-standard, making them a special purchase. Also, many people don't understand cable select, nor do they realize it needs a special cable. If you set both drives to "CS" and then use them on a regular (non-cable-select) IDE cable, both drives will configure themselves as "master", causing a configuration conflict.

Making matters worse, the 40-conductor IDE/ATA cable select cables have the "master connector" as the middle device and the "slave connector" as the device at the end of the cable, farthest from the host. For signaling reasons, it's best to put a single drive at the end of a cable, not put it in the middle leaving a "stub" of wire hanging off the end of the channel. But if you do this, that single drive sets itself as a slave with no master, a technically illegal configuration. Worse, suppose you do this, and your hard disk sets itself as a slave, and the system boots from it without problem, as most would. Then, you decide to add a new hard disk. You set it to cable select and attach it to the middle connector. The new drive then becomes the master, and thus moves ahead of the old drive in precedence! The system will try to boot from it instead of your old drive (which some people might want, but many do not.)

To get around this problem, a second type of 40-wire cable select cable was created, the so-called "Y-shaped" cable. On this one, the connector to the system is in the middle, and the slave and master connectors are on the two opposite ends of the cable. This certainly makes things less confusing, but has its own difficulties. For starters, IDE/ATA cables are very limited in length, which means this "Y-shaped" cable was hard to use in large tower systems. All your drives had to be mounted very close to the motherboard or controller card so the cable would reach. And again, the cable was a special item.

As you can see, the traditional way of doing cable select was a total mess, which was why it was never widely adopted. The key reason for this mess was--once again--lack of standardization. I rather expected cable select to eventually wither away. However, when the 80-conductor Ultra DMA cable was introduced, the cable select feature was much improved, changing the potential of this feature. The two key changes were:

Drive Position: Unlike the old cables, with the 80-conductor cable, the master connector is at the end of the cable, and the slave is in the middle. As I explained above, this is a much more sensible arrangement, since a single drive placed at the end of the cable will be a master, and a second drive added in the middle a slave.

Universality: All 80-conductor IDE/ATA cables support cable select (or at least, all of the ones that are built to meet the ATA standards). This means there's no confusion over what cables support the feature, and no need for strange "Y-cables" and other non-standard solutions.

These two changes mean a world of difference for the future of cable select. Since these cables will eventually completely replace all of the 40-conductor cables, all systems will be capable of running cable select without any special hardware being needed. As I mentioned before, you can still explicitly set drives to master or slave if you want to, and the CSEL signal will be ignored by the drives. So the bottom line is that these cables work either way, cable select or not. What will finally make cable select catch on? If drive manufacturers and systems integrators widely agree to use it, and the manufacturers start shipping drives with the "CS" jumpers on by default. We'll have to see if this happens.

Warning: 80-conductor IDE/ATA cables are often said to be compatible with 40-conductor cables. That's true of normal 40-conductor cables with drives jumpered as master and slave, but not cable select cables. If you swap a regular (non-"Y-shaped") 40-conductor cable select cable with an 80-conductor IDE cable, the master and slave drives will swap logical positions. If you don't that to happen, you'll need to change the order that the devices connect to the cable.
 
Hi,

If the new 80 GB HD is replacing 60GB HD then there should not be any compatibility issues.

1. check the cable direction. red ribbon thing.
2. check the jumpers put the new HD as master and stand alone and see if it is detected in BIOS.
3. See the hard drive works on any of your friends computers if it does not work on yours. Do the process of elimination.
4. Still problems replace with another HD. HD may be bad.
 
Thanks for the help everyone, as I've now got it working.

It was the motherboard bios that stopped it working.

It seems version F2 was good enough to allow the 60GB drive to work ok, but it needed to be more recent than that to allow the 80GB drive to work. Even though when I was updating the bios it was saying "bios ID error", I decided to give it a shot anyway, and it worked.

So crisis over, I now have a working HD.

Thanks all.
 
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