Installing Salvaged drive, doesn't see the drive

[vegeoku]

Ok i was rebuilding my computer, and got a 40gb harddrive from my friend for only $10, I was trying to set it up as my secondary slave drive, but I coulndt figure out how to set the jumpers. I just left them how they were and connected it up, and it doens't wsee the drive. It sees my cdrw drive, which is connected on the same cable, but it doesn't see the drive, and gives me some error when I try to boot up my computer. (please note I am trying to start my computer up with just this harddrive trying to format it and install Windows on it) But yeah. Can anyone tell me what to set my jumpers to, becasue I have no idea.

[vegeoku]

Oh yeah I forgot to mention, the harddrive is from my friends old Compaq Presario 5000 desktop. There are no markings of any kind on the drive, about all it has is some serial numbers and a couple barcodes.

[Coconut Monkey]

First of all, the hard drive needs to be on its own IDE controller (i.e. its own cable), otherwise you will suffer from degraded performance. Then, follow the jumper diagrams printed on the drive to set it up as master (there is usually a "jumper" that fits over two pins on the back of the drive) and plug the drive in using the end connection of the IDE cable. If you can't understand the jumper layout, then chances are it's already set to master if it was the primary drive in the Compaq.

[moderate_rock48]

you could probably type the specifications into google and find a jumper diagram for it.

[vegeoku]

Yeah, ok I got that drive to work, but now my computer wont see my other drive. I have 3 harddrives, it sees the compaw harddrive, and my old 30gb drive, but not my new 60gb drive. I can go into Partiton magic and it sees the drive there, but I can't see it in My computer, or get to it in the dos prompt. I think the jumpers might be off but im not sure. Any othe reason that it might not be seeing the drive in my computer?

[Coconut Monkey]

Make sure you're logged in with your administrator account, and head into Control Panel, Administrative Tools, Computer Management, Disk Management. On the right you should see a list of drives, with your new 60Gb drive somewhere within (if you have one other disk, it should be labelled Disk 1, with the primary drive called Disk 0).

Right-click the entry, choose to ‘initialise’ the drive, and follow the wizard. Then right-click again, choose to ‘partition’ the drive, and set it up according to your partition preference. After that's done (phew), right-click the drive once more, and select ‘format’.

Ensure you do a full format (I like to for new drives), and go and make a few cups of tea (it'll take a while, although you can do some other things while the drive is formatting).

If you don't have Windows XP (which the above guide applies to), then you'll need to use fdisk in pure DOS mode to partition and format the drive (which I will explain further if this is the case).

[vegeoku]

I went into the computer management program, and did what you said, but my 60gb drive wasn't int he list. I had disk 0, disk 2, and cdrw drive. I think my jumpers aren't set right, so im going to switch those around and see if I can get it to work that way.

[Coconut Monkey]

I'm thinking your 60Gb is disk 2 (unless there's another drive I don't know about) - check the properties! (total size, unpartitioned?)

[vegeoku]

No its not disk 2, disk 0 is my 40gb drive, and disk 2 is my 30gb drive. My 60gb drive is nowhere to be seen. I found I didnt have my jumpers on that drive set to slave,I hate computers =/ only sometimes though...

[vegeoku]

I finally got it to work =D yay, took forever but I got it. what I had to do was move all my information onto a harddrive I had, leaving my 40gb and 60gb open to be formatted. I switched them, making my 60 the master and 40 the slave instead of the other way around, installed windows on the 60 gb, and it worked fine. I think the jumopers on my 60gb were wrong, that or it just doesnt like to be a slave drive. dunno. thanks for all your help.