• Some users have recently had their accounts hijacked. It seems that the now defunct EVGA forums might have compromised your password there and seems many are using the same PW here. We would suggest you UPDATE YOUR PASSWORD and TURN ON 2FA for your account here to further secure it. None of the compromised accounts had 2FA turned on.
    Once you have enabled 2FA, your account will be updated soon to show a badge, letting other members know that you use 2FA to protect your account. This should be beneficial for everyone that uses FSFT.

BIOS Doesn't Recognize New AND Old Drives

M

mark4man

n00b
Joined
Jul 17, 2005
Messages
17
Hello...

Having a pretty serious problem w/ drive replacement & recognition. I’m selling my old Dell 8250 to a friend; & wanted to swap out ROM Drives beforehand. My new workstation (ADK Pro Audio) came w/ an LG DVD-ROM drive; & my old Dell had a Plextor Premium CD-RW drive…which I wanted installed in the new audio machine. In the process of taking the Plextor out of the Dell…the connector at the end of the ribbon cable split apart & ripped completely off the cable itself. I thought…no problem…head down to Micro Center for a new one in a few days. I installed the Plextor in the new machine successfully & went on about my business.

Today, I wanted to clean up old files off the Dell ‘cause my friend wants to buy it now on new Year’s Eve day. I set it back up & turn it on; & the BIOS reads non-recognition of Secondary Drive & CD-ROM Drive

[Background: My configuration on the Dell was 2 Hard Drives & a CD-ROM Drive…Primary Drive (OS) on the primary channel/ribbon cable…w/ the Secondary Drive (Audio Data) on the secondary channel/ribbon cable (middle connector)...& the CD-ROM Drive on the same channel/cable, at the end connector].

So I thought…fine…I forgot…the end of the ribbon cable is messed up; & even tho the secondary hard drive was still connected to the middle connector of that same damaged cable…I just figured the damaged end was the reason both drives weren’t being recognized.

So…off I go to Micro Center…come home w/ a new ribbon cable…install the LG DVD-ROM Drive…connect the new cable & appropriate power supply connector…

…fire up the Dell…

& the BIOS is reading exactly the same…it doesn’t recognize either drive.

Can someone please help me through this dilemma…I sure would appreciate it. I’m pretty sure I didn’t fry anything inside the tower. Everything looks normal; & everything is hooked up properly. The ribbon cable is an 80 wire…same thing that was in there originally. I’m a little iffy on the master/slave/cable select thing (as per my previous post). My primary & secondary drives have the jumpers in the exact same position…nothing’s changed there. The new LG is set to cable select, I think (3rd set to the left)…but that shouldn’t make any difference since that drive’s at the end of the cable, right?

Hope I didn't screw anything up...need some help, in a bad way.

Thanks,

mark4man
 
Move the jumpers around on the hard drive and DVD-ROM drive. Set one of them to Master, and the other to Slave.
 
Thanks...

...that was it...(found it by reading the documentation...it actually helps to read the documentation, yu see). As it turns out, the DVD-ROM Drive was set to cable select...that was the 1st part of the problem [it was connected to the end connector (Master) of the secondary channel/cable]. I switched the jumper to Master; & the BIOS then recognized both drives on that channel at reboot...that part's now fixed.

The other problem was (& I have no idea why)...there is no 2nd (Slave) Drive on the primary channel [only the Primary (OS) Drive]...but the BIOS setting for this drive was set to 'Auto Detect'. For some reason...it continued to try & locate a drive; & the error dialog continued to come up at bootup until I switched it to 'None'.

All fixed up now (but a little confused as to why auto detect triggered the BIOS error.)

Thanks very much,

mark4man
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top