New PC won't recognize a second hard drive

[Guest]

Just bought a new Compaq Presario SR1909UK which comes with an 80GB Hitachi
Deskstar drive (partioned at about 75GB for the O/S as the C: drive and 5GB
as the restore software showing as the D: drive).

My old machine had exactly the same drive as the C: drive and I had added a
120GB Samsung drive as a D: drive as I was running out of space. Transferred
all my old data onto my new PC, formatted the old Samsung drive in the old PC
and then installed it in the new Compaq machine (including the IDE ribbon
cable which I know worked fine).

The BIOS sees both drives immediately but the Compaq will not boot up, just
hangs at a blank screen with flashing cursor - as soon as I unplug the
Samsung drive from the slave position on the IDE connector everything is OK
again - tried putting it back in my old machine again and absolutely fine -
checked jumper pin settings on the Hitachi 80GB drives and they are the same
- any ideas anyone as I cannot see what's so difficult and have never had
problems installing a second drive before???

Many Thanks

Jim.

 

[Bob I]

have you tried wiping formatting the Samsung drive. Is the Samsung
partition set as Active perhaps?

 

[Yves Leclerc]

Have you checked:

1) Hard drive jumper settings? You need to make sure that only ONE drive is
set to Master per IDE cable.

2) Compaq's BIOS/CMOS screen and tell tit that there is a second hard drive.

I believe that Compaqs may use "Cable-Select" jumper settings. That is so
that when the drive is connected to the Master/ Slave connector, the drive is
set to Master/ Slave. Both hard drives need to have the 'Cable Select" jumper
on.