Hmm...Question on Hard Drives.

Ok, got another question. I recently ripped apart an old computer. In it I was able to salvage two older hard drives (365mb and 1.7gb). Now, my desktop computer is low on space, and has two hard drives (1.2gb and 526mb). I've got one CD-Rom rom on the thing.

Every time I go to hook up an additional hard drive from the salvaged computer, it either won't boot all the way, says it can't find a drive with bootable media, or I can get it to boot w/o a CD-Rom. Is it even possible to have a computer with more than two hard drives? Or do I need to go buy an IDE controller or what?

And no, I am not going to go buy a nice large 80 some gig hard drive or a new desktop computer.

EDIT: Forgot to mention...I won't be using the 365mb hard drive, as it has nothing on it. I just want to add the 1.7gb, keep the two existing hard drives, and the CD-Rom.

The problem likely lies in your master/slave jumper settings. You most likely have two IDE channels; each channel supports two devices, making a maximum of four. Therefore, it will be possible to add another hard drive to your system.

First, what you must do is determine which device is master or slave and which channel it is on. The hard drive you boot from is most definitely the master on your primary IDE channel. Your CD-ROM drive may be the slave on that same channel, or the slave might be your other hard drive. In either case, one of those two other drives (2nd HD or CD-ROM) should be the master on the secondary channel. You should be able to add the new hard drive as the slave on the secondary channel.

Each IDE cable has three connectors; one end goes to the motherboard, and the other two connect to drives. Just find the drive that is connected to a cable with an unused connector and connect your new hard drive to that.

Most drives should have a little diagram on them somewhere that shows the different jumper settings used to set master or slave. Set your hard drive as slave, connect it, and you should be up and running, hopefully.

Yeah, I was guessing it was the jumper, but wasn't totally sure. It has one on the bottom with numbers next to it. On the top, it says:

Jumper: J20
Master/Single: On
Slave: Off

I'm guessing that if I remove the little thingie on jumper J20, it'll turn into a slave, right? Then I can connect it to my primary IDE, right?

If not, I could transfer all my old files on the 536mb hard drive over to the newer 1.7gb one (only about 130mb or so). But, I'd like to have three hard drives.

Yes, you can do that, and it should work, assuming the hard drive you boot from is the master on the primary IDE channel. That would put your current other hard drive and CD-ROM drive on the secondary channel, right?

Make sure that your hard disks are chained in the correct order. It's not supposed to matter, but some systems are finicky about that kind of thing.
Also, IIRC you can't slave a HD to a CD Rom. Im not sure about that one though.

Assmaster said:

IIRC you can't slave a HD to a CD Rom. Im not sure about that one though.

Of course you can. Why not? I know I've done it before.

Just something I heard. Like I said, I could be wrong. It might just be old information from a much older class of computers (486 and such).

Well, couldn't get all three drives to boot up (try again tomorrow...want to try one more thing). But, I got the main problem solved. If anything, I just replaced the 536meg one with the 1.7gig. Now all I need is to get this Pentium 120 out of here. Thanks for the help all.

Bloodshedder said:

The problem likely lies in your master/slave jumper settings. You most likely have two IDE channels; each channel supports two devices, making a maximum of four. Therefore, it will be possible to add another hard drive to your system.

Or the Hard Drives came fourm a crashed comp. If thats the case the crash can spreed to the other hard drives.

Demons Hand said:

Or the Hard Drives came fourm a crashed comp. If thats the case the crash can spreed to the other hard drives.

What the hell are you talking about? A head crash? That's not a disease, it can't spread to other drives. If you're talking about some sort of other crash like an OS dying, that's not a disease either. If you're talking about a boot sector virus, that can't spread unless it's trying to boot off that hard drive; even in that case, it won't be loaded permanently into memory, so it can't infect the hard drive that it should be booting off.

actually. my
cdrw is pri master,
cd is pri slave
and my hd is seccondary primary. just as long as there is a drive thats bootible in ny ide slot, it will boot.
but thats probobly because my pc is a premio and premios are good pc's.

Seems strange, you are slowing computer down.

Assmaster said:

Make sure that your hard disks are chained in the correct order. It's not supposed to matter, but some systems are finicky about that kind of thing.
Also, IIRC you can't slave a HD to a CD Rom. Im not sure about that one though.

Using Master/Slave I've never had a problem. However Cable Select sometimes makes problems, even when it's setup correctly.