Weird Hard Drive Problem

[Spetsnaz201]

I have 2 HDs installed in my system, along with 1 dvd-rw drive. Ever since I built my system couple years ago, I have had this weird problem, if all 3 arent connected then the system wont boot to windows. The first hd has xp installed, the 2nd hd is my old one, and the 3rd drive is the dvd-rw. Today my 2nd hard drive failed. I saw it coming because it made clickig noises and recently it dissapeared from my computer. So now my system wont load with only 1 main hard drive and dvd-rw drive. In order for it to load there needs to be 3 drives plugged in and ALWAYS in specific order.

Prior to the failure, mine were connected in this sequence.

Primary Master - Main HD with XP and all my programs
Primary Slave - -2nd HD (empty)
Secondary Master - DVD-Rw

since the primary slave is now gone , no matter what i do and how i change the connections it won t load with only 2 connected.
Why am I having this problem? I need to load my sys without that faulty unused hd.

Thanks for any answers in advance



AMD Athlon 64 3000+ S939
Western Digital 120GB 8MB HD
Western Digital 20GB 8MB HD (failed)
NEC 2510A Dvd_RW

 

[thebeephaha]

Jumpers are your friends, you need to make sure they are correct. This is going to be hard to explain since every drive has different settings, but you need to make sure the master and slave settings are proper now that a drive is missing. Some drives have Master, Slave, CS, or some weird one like "Master with Slave Attached", etc...

 

[Nenu]

Was Windows on drive C: or was it on another drive letter?

 

[thebeephaha]

Windows will most often be C, unless you do a lot of work to change it.