yes i have an emachines 1.8 GHz Intel celeron PC and I am trying to add a second hard drive. when i plug it in (power and IDE cable) and try to boot it says "NO OPERATING SYSTEM FOUND". When i unplug the new drive my first drive boots into windows. In the BIOS I looked around and it looks like its on auto. can some one give me a nudge in the right direction. Thanx

sneekypete,

Simple. Your computer is trying to boot to the second hard drive. You must ensure the jumpers are set correctly. Either one to slave and the other to master, or both to cable select. In any event, you should place the master drive at the end of the IDE cable and the slave in the middle. After which, you should go into BIOS and check if there are any slave/master changes you can make. Auto is usually reserved for detection of HDD specs, not whether it's a slave or master. But every BIOS is slightly different than the other, so this may be true in your case. Get it? In your case? Computer case? OK forget it.

J_

ok my primary drive is on the end of the cable and the secondary drive is on the middle of the cable. i am not sure where to put the jumpers on the drives so i just played around with it. as far as the BIOS i messed with that to not really knowing what i was doing. but nothing works why is it hitting my secondary drive first when its on the middle of the cable?

I think you should concentrate on the jumpers before messing with the BIOS.
In some cases the possible setting is printed on the drive. If not, you could consult
the homepage of the manufacturer. Finally, you could tell me the brand and model
of the two drives. Then I can figure it out.

i have the PC at my house i will post up the drive names when i get home. thank you for your help.

Once you figure out how to set it as the master/slave, configure your first drive (the one with the OS, ie. your old drive) as the master, and configure your new drive as the slave. Now you shouldn't have a problem during bootup.

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