can't find slave hard drive

[Guest]

A secondary hard drive( Samsung) is installed as a slave per suggested key
setting.
After installation, during the booting, a message popped and said "secondary
is not found" Obviously, in the "computer property" menu, only "C" drive is
displayed.
However, "Add Hardware Wizard" shows the hard drive and says "it is working
propery"
During the booting, I clicked "F2", and changed the secondary hard drive to
"Auto" from "off". However the same problem.
My system is Dell 4550 with Windows XP Home.
Please help!

 

[Mike Hall \(MS-MVP\)]

Is the drive partitioned and formatted?

Right click on 'My Computer'.. select 'Manage'.. in the ensuing window,
click on 'Disk management' which is a sub heading of 'Storage'.. you can set
up your slave drive from here..

 

[John Thomas Smith]

A secondary hard drive( Samsung) is installed as a slave

What is the jumper setting on the primary drive?

I **think** that if you have the 2nd drive set to slave, you
must set the 1st drive jumper to master, not cable select or
only drive (of course, I could be wrong)

John Thomas Smith
http://www.direct2usales.com
http://www.pacifier.com/~jtsmith

 

[Guest]

John's right on the cables and jumpers make sure one is slave ,one master.
Also the drive you are installing takes the next drive letter after c: that
is available by default. if you have any USB or external drives, they may be
taking the drive letter that is next in line. External drives seem to start
up after internal drives and thus if your internal drive wants the letter,
there could be a conflict as weel though usually the internal drive wins.

 

[Guest]

you talk about 'secondary' and 'slave'.

there is:
primary master jumpered as master
primary slave jumpered as slave
on one ribbon (gray) cable

secondary master jumpered as master
secondary slave jumpered as slave
on the other ribbon cable

where do you have HDD connected?
Which "ribbon/jumper" combo are you setting to "Auto"?
I clicked "F2", and changed the ""secondary"" hard drive to "Auto" from
"off".

Your terminology ois confusing!!

 

[Mike Hall \(MS-MVP\)]

Dixonian

In the BIOS of most machines, it is possible to set IDE detection to 'auto'
(this will find all new HDDs), 'off' which will disable the IDE channel, or
user where you can allow for the very oldest of HDDs..

F2 is the 'function' key that is pressed at the initialisation screen to get
into the BIOS settings.. Dell computers respond to F2 in this way..

The OP needs to check the jumpers for sure, and if they prove to be ok, then
the OP should go into Disk Management and partition/format the drive..

 

[Guest]

In my BIOS, I can select each position (pri, sec, master, slave) to OFF or
Auto.

So I wasn't sure which position this person is setting to Off or Auto.

This should make sense.