Hayelp!!

G

Greg Pookanus

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Joined
Sep 13, 2003
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Ok, i already have 2 SATA hard drives in my system, 1 which has xp home on it and the other is blank. (C: and F:). I just installed a 120 GB IDE drive, slaved from my Dvd writer which is on IDE channel 2.

Bios detects it fine. So i go into desktop, under disk management it sais.
Disk 2 Unkown Not initialised
111.75GB Unallocated

I cant right click on it to format, the format option isnt selectable. How do i format it?
 
Hard drives should never be slaves to optical drives.
I don't know if that'll fix your problem, but you should change it.

>Br@d
 
Originally posted by Greg Pookanus
Why shouldnt they be slaves to optical drives?
Click to expand...

Because it will cause a harmonic feedback loop in the IDE cable and cause the hard drive to explode.

Seriously, it's a bad idea. At worst, both devices will slow down to the speed of the slower one (the CDROM drive) so an ATA133 drive might run at ATA33 or 66 speed. Most modern IDE controllers can run 2 different devices independantly of each other at different speeds, so this MAY not be an issue for you. As a general rule of thumb though, you dont want to mix CDROM/CDRW/DVD drives with hard drives on the same cable unless you ABSOLUTELY have to. I'd go so far as to get an additional controller card if I were faced with having to mix device types on the same line.

One limitation of the IDE interface is that only one device on the line can talk at once, so if you are copying from the CD to the HD then it's switching back and forth, really really fast, but it's not a steady stream of data. I've even heard of CDROMs on the same cable with HD's corrupting the HDs because of data transfer differences.
 
Do you have to initialize some manufacturer's drives using their software or should XP be able to handle the job on it's own no matter you made the drive? I know a lot of retail drives come with software if not all of them, and I'm wondering if this might be the problem here.
 
Come to think of it, don't you have to CREATE a partition before there is something to format?
 
Ive sorted it out, but i cant set it to master. so i slaved it off a cd rom drive, i hope it doesnt cause any problems will it?

its only a back up hard drive, not the one with OS, or games e.t.c it wont hinder performance right?
 
Regarding Opticals and HDDs on the same channel

its a mythology that had a basis in fact way back when, and has been reinforced by the way Windows deals with DMA issues

about the only thing you should worry about is that the drive at the end of the cable is Master (Black Connector) and the Middle connector (Grey) is for slave drives, never connect a master to the middle of the cable, or you will get reflections from the end (but it wont blow up :p )
 
Originally posted by Ice Czar
Regarding Opticals and HDDs on the same channel

its a mythology that had a basis in fact way back when, and has been reinforced by the way Windows deals with DMA issues

about the only thing you should worry about is that the drive at the end of the cable is Master (Black Connector) and the Middle connector (Grey) is for slave drives, never connect a master to the middle of the cable, or you will get reflections from the end (but it wont blow up :p )
Click to expand...

I'm telling you, it WILL blow up, I've lost 3 fingers, 2 toes and a gonad this way:eek: ... well, maybe not the gonad, but it could happen:D :D :D
 
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