Ray K wrote:
> I had a problem that I solved by successfully installing W2K on a NEW (not
> reformatted) c: drive jumpered (not Cable Select) as the Primary Master,
> with the Slave position empty.
>
> I then connected the old c: drive (now rejumpered as Slave) on the same IDE
> cable. Upon rebooting, I can't get past the POST. The BIOS correctly reports
> the sizes and positions of both these Primary Channel drives.
>
> I moved the old c: drive to Slave position on the Secondary channel, so the
> configuration was just one drive on the Primary channel and a DVD burner and
> hard drive on the Secondary channel. It booted normally.
>
> I then reconnected the old Primary Slave (still jumpered as Slave) back
> again to its original Primary Slave position. Again, I could not get past
> POST. This time, however, the BIOS doesn't recognize the Primary Slave drive
> at all. (Says something like 'none installed'.)
>
> Questions:
> 1. Why can't I get past POST with either drive in the Primary Slave
> position? (One clue may be that the new 500GB Primary Master has one 137GB
> partition and a tiny 7.81MB partition, both created by W2K during
> installation; the rest of the drive isn't partitioned or formatted yet.)
>
> 2. Regarding the Primary Slave position, why does the BIOS recognize what
> had been the old Primary Master but not what had been the old Primary Slave?
A drive jumpered to be master doesn't necessarily stay jumpered that way
after a slave drive is added to the same controller (i.e., on the same
IDE cable). Some drives are jumpered as Master-only which means there
is no slave drive; that is, they are jumpered as a solo drive (which
happens to make them the master device). However, once a slave is
added, you might have to change the jumper to another position from
Master-solo to Master-with-slave, or you leave the Master jumper where
it is and add another jumper to announce the presence of an added slave
drive. Some drives with auto-detect the presence of the added slave
drive so you don't need to change their jumper (i.e., it was at Master
and remains at Master so no jumper changes are needed). The Master
drive controls when signals are to be recognized by the slave.
I remember some Western Digital drives where you jumpered it one way for
Master-solo but a different way for Master-with-slave. It was still the
master device but it had to be told there was a slave (i.e., it didn't
auto-detect the slave's presence). Check what the drive's manual or
look at the connection chart stickered onto the drive to see what it
says regarding where to place the jumpers. Sometimes the drive vendors
also have jumper charts available at their web site. Being the Master
did not mean the jumper never changed even when it remained the Master.
I also ran into drives that automatically detected the presence of an
another drive but that drive wouldn't work when the added drive was one
of those where you had to manually switch from Master-solo
Master-with-slave (even after configuring it as the slave). That is,
those drives just didn't play well with each other. That is, you
couldn't mix an auto-detect drive with a manual-detect drive. You had
to play around to find out if there was a jumper setting on both that
got them working together. Sometimes an auto-detect drive won't play
well with a manual-detect drive, especially if the manual-detect drive
is the master and the auto-detect drive is the slave. If you couldn't
come up with a mix of jumper settings on both drives that got them
working together, you resorted to seeing if cable select on both would
get them to work, if both had that option.
Although the cable has 40 signal wires, there are only 39 pins used in
the connectors. Pin 20 is not used. In some keyed female connectors,
pin 20 is plugged (it's solid, no opening in which a pin can slide
into). Although the connector body might itself have a key node to
polarize it when inserted into the shround around the male pin header,
There are some shrouds that have the slot on both sides which defeats
this polarizing key on the cable connector. You could take a polarized
cable and still insert it right or wrong way onto the header. You might
as well as pull off the shroud since it is depolarized. The assumption
is that the polarized connector won't just have a key node on the
connector but also plugs pin 20 which means it cannot be inserted upside
down (the header has pin 20 missing so the plugged hole doesn't find an
interfering pin but it will if inserted upside down). Yet some
connectors with the polarizing node on the connector do NOT plug pin 20.
So you have a connector that is polarized only by its connector body and
not with a plugged pin 20 that goes into a depolarized shroud for the
header. The result is the polarization both defeated and incompletedly
implemented. With the old 40-wire, 40-pin IDE cables, and when they
were [effectively] depolarized, they could be attached upside down as
long as each connector was upside down; that is, you only needed to
ensure pin 1 of the drive at the end along the ribbon cable went to pin
1 of the middle drive along the ribbon cable to pin 1 of the mobo
header. Pin 1 of the ribbon cable might be colored (i.e., striped) but
the cable could be used upside down (so pin 40 is indicated by the
stripe). 80-wire, 40-pin IDE cables have a 1/4" cutout in the pin 20
signal wire. If the connections were [effectively] depolarized, it
doesn't much matter if it was installed upside down as pin 19 would be
the one disconnected but it is a ground signal line and there 6 other
ground signal lines (see
http://www.bbdsoft.com/ide.html). The problem
occurs when a depolarized shroud is used around the male header and the
user jams the polarized connector upside down (since the shround with
slots on both sides permits the upside-down insertion). The plugged
hole for pin 20 in the connector would squash down pin 19 (pin 20 is
missing in the drive's header, not pin 19 for ground) and possibly short
it against an adjacent header pin.
Do these drives (or the controller on the motherboard) support ATA-66 or
later? If so, you might be required to use an 80-wire, 40-signal IDE
cable. The normal (or old IDE) cables only had 40 wires, one for each
signal (which included multiple grounds but they were still "signal"
lines). To reduce crosstalk across the non-twisted single signal wires
at the higher transfer rates at and above ATA-66, the 80-wire cable adds
a ground wire between each signal wire. There are still only 40 signal
wires but there are 40 additional ground wires for reducing noise. Some
controllers or drives will detect if you use an 80-wire, 40-signal IDE
cable but some don't. Because of the noise that can be induced on a
"tail" in wiring (acting like an antenna) or an echo due to bounce from
the end, you should always connect a drive on the end of the IDE cable.
If you have only 1 drive, it goes on the end connector. The 2nd drive,
if present, goes on the middle connector. Regardless that the IDE
controller supports ATA-66, or higher, transfer rates, you can still use
a 40-wire, 40-pin IDE cable if you attach under-ATA-66 drives to that
cable. If you use ATA-66 drives, or higher, then you need to use an
80-wire, 40-pin IDE cable. The connectors look the same to you from the
outside but the teeth inside them to pierce through the ribbon cable are
smaller and more tightly arrange for the 80-wire cable.
http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/imageview.php?image=586
Shows 80-wire, 40-pin IDE cable on left. 40-wire, 40-pin on right.
http://www.storagereview.com/guideIm...4wires4080.jpg
Closer image of ribbon cables. 80-wire is smaller guage and smoother.
For Windows 2000, you sure its install doesn't only allow a maximum
partition size of 4GB? During the install, NTFS is not yet available so
FAT16 is used. Both copies (main and spare) of the FAT16 table are
used. The maximum partition size under FAT16 is 2GB (see;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File_Al...le#Final_FAT16 and
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/138364/). Using both tables during the
install lets them create a 4GB initial partition. Later, if you chose,
you can elect to use the NTFS file system that supports larger
partitions but the OS partition remains at its initial size of 4GB.
NTFS will support larger partitions but it wasn't available during the
install itself. After the install completes, you can use 3rd party
utilities (e.g., PartitionMagic, Easus Partition Manager, etc.) to
enlarge the 4GB NTFS partition. Perhaps the drive came pre-configured
with a 137GB partition so the Windows 2000 didn't have to create it thus
it could install using the NTFS master table already present. That is,
maybe the drive came pre-formatted with a 137GB partition (which you can
enlarge using 3rd party utilities). If you're actually hitting the
137GB limit in your hardware (i.e., the utilities won't make it bigger),
you might have a BIOS limitation which means you need to update the
BIOS, if an update is available, or there is 28-bit addressing limit in
the hardware for your motherboard which means you need a new mobo that
includes 48-bit LBA mode (or you're stuck running an overlay manager,
like Ontrack's Dynamic Drive Overlay, in the MBR's bootstrap area to
compensate for shortcomings in the BIOS to get past the 137GB barrier);
see
http://www.48bitlba.com. My guess is if you see a 137GB partition
on the drive then it was already there when you received the hard disk
since Windows 2000 itself cannot create one larger than 4GB during its
installation.
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