Primary and Slave Disk

[Isabel]

Have two HDD which have just installed as Master and Slave
disks but my PC does not recognized the existence of the
slave disk. It has to be pointed out that the slave disk
is having problems and the idea of installing it as a
slave disk is to have access to all files, rescue them
using the master access. Once all files contained in the
slave disk are copied then I'll change the slave back into
the Master position, boot it and reloand full Windows XP
from the beginning, including formatting, and then re-
install it as a slave.

The whole point here is not to loose all files kept in
current slave HDD.

How can my PC recognize this slave disk ? am I skipping an
important step ? is it possible to access all files from
Master disk ?

Thanks

 

[Norm]

What manufacturers disks are they. Maxtor's take a single jumper for Master
and no jumpers for slave. Western Digitals are totally different. Can you
see both disks in the bios?
Have two HDD which have just installed as Master and Slave
disks but my PC does not recognized the existence of the
slave disk. It has to be pointed out that the slave disk
is having problems and the idea of installing it as a
slave disk is to have access to all files, rescue them
using the master access. Once all files contained in the
slave disk are copied then I'll change the slave back into
the Master position, boot it and reloand full Windows XP
from the beginning, including formatting, and then re-
install it as a slave.

The whole point here is not to loose all files kept in
current slave HDD.

How can my PC recognize this slave disk ? am I skipping an
important step ? is it possible to access all files from
Master disk ?

Thanks

 

[Isabel]

Thanks for your response. Both disks are Maxtor and I can
only see the Master one in the bios.

 

[Norm]

Isabel, if they are both Maxtor's and you cannot see the slave (no jumpers)
in the bios then I would suspect the slave disk is bad. It's doubtful that
the ide port is bad by you might install the jumper, make it a master and
attach it to the cable alone and see what the bios says.

Thanks for your response. Both disks are Maxtor and I can
only see the Master one in the bios.

 

[Nathan McNulty]

Or you may want to try a different IDE Cable. Some cables are unable to
determine slave/master for you. My Maxtor drive does CS when you remove
the jumpers.