Hard Drive won't run as Master

[H.J]

My HD with xp on it makes a clunking noise when I try to boot it up as
the master drive and my system won't go beyond the BIOS screen
(Symptoms of a dead drive). However, When I use the same drive as a
slave, I'm able to acess everything on it and it works perfectly.

Can someone tell me how I can get it to run as a master again without
reformating or losing too much of my stuff?

 

[Impmon]

Can someone tell me how I can get it to run as a master again without
reformating or losing too much of my stuff?

Did you check to make sure the jumper on the hard drive are in proper
position? Also if you connect to the middle connector of some IDE
cables (afaik all 80 conductors cable are CS) your hard drive would
only show up as slave.

Also make sure your BIOS is set correctly (ie auto detect)

 

[Rod Speed]

What exactly do you mean by that last ? Presumably
you mean it freezes on the bios screen, never gets past it.
You can have to wait for a surprisingly long time if the bios
cant see a drive, takes a surprisingly long time to time out.

Symptoms of not being able to read the drive, anyway.

Thats rather odd. I'd try another ribbon cable, it may well
be a defective cable producing some rather odd symptoms.

Did you check to make sure the jumper
on the hard drive are in proper position?

Also if you connect to the middle connector of some
IDE cables (afaik all 80 conductors cable are CS)
Correct.

your hard drive would only show up as slave.

The wiring detail seen with CS cables doesnt prevent you
having a drive jumpered as master on the middle connector.

And he shouldnt be seeing the drive clunking either, it should
just show up as the config he doesnt want, but still work fine.

Also make sure your BIOS is set correctly (ie auto detect)

That shouldnt produce the clunking either.