New Hard Drive....Hmm

[Rich18144]

Hey Guys.

I have recently purchased a Seagate Barracuda 7200 RPM, 8Mb cache, 120 Gb hard Drive and was (perhaps understandably ) eager to replace my aging 40Gb Hard Drive.

I was wondering if there was any reason as to why the new hard drive doesnt seem to be recognised by bios or by the start-up proceedure.

I have read that the new drive is an Ultra ATA drive, and that there are specific Ultra ATA cables. Would having an average ATA cable mean that the new drive wouldnt work? Also, I'm unsure what kind of cble i have, would anybody happen to be able to give me any distinguishing features of one?

If nobody can tell me what this could be, I will send it back to the company i bought it off as faulty.

My thanks

Richard Allan

 

[GavinO]

The special ATA/66 and ATA/100 cables are 80-conductor, versus the standard 40-conductor cable used for ATA/33. The 40 extra conductors are grounds interleaved with the signal lines, to prevent crosstalk. You can distinguish the 80-conductor cable by it having thinner leads (compare to a floppy cable, which uses the same lead width as 40-conductor cable). 80-conductor cables also typically have the headers colored blue, grey, and black for controller, master, and slave (the end of the cable opposite the blue header is the master).

What I would check on your hard drive is the master/slave/cable select jumper setting. Usually drives come as cable select from the factory, but sometimes not. If the drive is in cable select mode, and isn't behaving, I would change the jumper to reflect its actual position on the cable. Its also important to verify the settings of the other drive on the chain.

Lastly, I'd make sure that the port the drive is connected to is enabled in the BIOS. Some PC manufacturers set the unused ATA channels to disabled manually, to improve boot times (not a bad practice). If the channel is enabled, you might try setting the drive type manually, though for a modern drive like that it should autodetect.

 

[Rich18144]

The special ATA/66 and ATA/100 cables are 80-conductor, versus the standard 40-conductor cable used for ATA/33. The 40 extra conductors are grounds interleaved with the signal lines, to prevent crosstalk. You can distinguish the 80-conductor cable by it having thinner leads (compare to a floppy cable, which uses the same lead width as 40-conductor cable). 80-conductor cables also typically have the headers colored blue, grey, and black for controller, master, and slave (the end of the cable opposite the blue header is the master).

Looking at the cable, it does seem to be a ATA/66/100 cable (damn..)

What I would check on your hard drive is the master/slave/cable select jumper setting. Usually drives come as cable select from the factory, but sometimes not. If the drive is in cable select mode, and isn't behaving, I would change the jumper to reflect its actual position on the cable. Its also important to verify the settings of the other drive on the chain.

I have tried te Hard Drive's jumpers in all of the positions available to it...The only one ui havent tried without Jumper at all, would that be a viable option or not?

Lastly, I'd make sure that the port the drive is connected to is enabled in the BIOS. Some PC manufacturers set the unused ATA channels to disabled manually, to improve boot times (not a bad practice). If the channel is enabled, you might try setting the drive type manually, though for a modern drive like that it should autodetect.

Given that this is a custom build PC, i doubt that i would have changed the ATA channels by myself, would a MBoard Manufacturer have changed this? How might I do that anyway?

Also, I dont think I have the option of manually setting the drive type...:S

Rich

 

[GavinO]

Generally the valid jumper locations are given on the HDD label. More irritating manufacturers stamp it somewhere on the back by the connectors (worst I saw was etched down by the pins, in a socket). Sometimes the valid positions are not entirely intuitive.

Usually to enable particular IDE channels, you browse through the BIOS to find the IDE configuration options. There should be a row each for master and slave on the primary and secondary IDE channels. Generally, the options are Disabled and Auto, with the possiblity of CDROM, HDD, LS-120. HDD usually also gives the option to select the head/sector/cylinder counts (this information should also be on the label). More important is the LBA setting; having it wrong can cause the drive to not work in the way you describe (changing it when there's data on the drive is particularly destructive, as my last server system discovered after a CMOS failure :/)

 

[Rich18144]

Hey,

Quick Update, havent had chance to look at the inside of the comp, but I have noticed that the drive is ATA-100 but the motherboard says ATA-133.

I would presume a motherboard compatibe with 133 would also be compatible with 100, any reason why not?

Rich

 

[GavinO]

Parallel ATA is pretty compatible all up and down the line. Differences between drives and controllers are usually resolved by operating at the lowest common speed. There may be an option in the BIOS, however, to set the speed of the motherboard controller to ATA/100 (may be listed as UDMA-5).