I am having trouble setting up my new hard drives. I have a Dell Dimension 4600 with BIOS version A10. I installed the two new drives and restarted my computer. Now all I get is a message saying Primary Drive 0 not found. I tried to enter setup but it won't let me. If anyone knows how to help me please do. The hard drives I am installing are WD2500 EIDE Drives. Thanks!!!!!
wsutliff 0 Newbie Poster
Chaky 191 Posting Virtuoso
There is a jumper on each drive. Jumper sets drive to master, slave or cable select. If both drives are on the same cable, one MUST be master (Primary master/drive 0) and other MUST be slave (primary slave/drive 1). You don't have to mandle with bios at all. Funny it isn't letting you in. You may consider flashing bios but leave it as a last resort.
My advice is to set it like this:
Primary IDE channel:
- HD (Master)
- Optical (Slave)
Secondary IDE Channel:
- HD (Master)
This way data transfer rate between HD's will be optimal. Also goes for RAID array.
wsutliff 0 Newbie Poster
I have the jumpers set correctly, I have also tried setting up just one hard drive but I get the same result. I am not sure what flash bios is. Any thoughts
Chaky 191 Posting Virtuoso
BIOS (Basic Input Output System) is a backbone program that runs your motherboard and all of the devices on it. Including an IDE controller. It is the one that is giving you the message. Normaly, you would be able to enter BIOS settings via pressing either del, f2 or f12 key (maybe other) and change the settings regarding HD. In some BIOS settings the auto-detection of hard drives is disabled because, face it, you don't go changing your hard drive on a reguler basis.
Flashing BIOS means writing the (newer or just other) program in it's place (it is in the removable chip on the mobo) and is very dangerous, for it can easely render your system unusable. (that is, if you interupt a flashing process or flash a wrong bios).
Preventing a user to get to a bios setting window is a form of protection some manufacturers use to protect users from them selfs. In your case it has an opposite effect. What you need to do is post an EXACT brand,model,version of your mobo aswell the BIOS version (it's on the post screen, just hit pause key to read it) and I will look it up for you.
There are, also some numbers on the bottom of the post screen. Those are usefull too.
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