Another Computer Question

[Peter Stahl]

I have 2 older PC's, one a PII and the other a PIV. I want to retire the PII so I thought being they both use IDE hard drives I could just pop the drive from the PII into the PIV as a slave and just copy away. The PII drive has window 2000 and the PIV has XP Pro. Trying to network them was impossible, at least for me. The problem I have is the PIV won't run the drive from the PII. I tried running just the Win 2000 drive in the PIV by itself and got a error message saying I need to run scandsk (I think). Why won't the Win 2000 drive run on the other PC? Still works fine on the PII. Oh yea, the PIV has a drive in it with Win XP on it like the one that won't run on the PIV. Both are WD 80 GB drives. Thanks for any help.

Pete

[Tom Veatch]

Do you have the master/slave jumpers set correctly? Been a while since I've been into the innards of a PC, but, as I recall, if you have the two drives on the same IDE port (both plugged into the same IDE cable), one has to have the jumper set to master, the other to slave. If they are on separate ports (separate cables into different connectors on the motherboard), they both need to be both set to master. Or the drive may have auto-sensing capability in which case the jumper can be set to auto-sensing mode. There should be a label on the drive body near the jumpers that shows the different jumper settings.

[Bob Genovesi]

Do you have the master/slave jumpers set correctly? Been a while since I've been into the innards of a PC, but, as I recall, if you have the two drives on the same IDE port (both plugged into the same IDE cable), one has to have the jumper set to master, the other to slave. If they are on separate ports (separate cables into different connectors on the motherboard), they both need to be both set to master. Or the drive may have auto-sensing capability in which case the jumper can be set to auto-sensing mode. There should be a label on the drive body near the jumpers that shows the different jumper settings.

Having these jumpers set correctly is priority #1. It's important that your P4 boots properly so it can see and access the secondary drive. It's hard to diagnose without being there.

Another way is to by an external drive adapter. This will allow you to use any standard internal IDE hard drive and make it an external. Once inserted into the adapter it connects to any USB port on your PC, then you'll have access to it.

Bob

[Chuck Wintle]

I have 2 older PC's, one a PII and the other a PIV. I want to retire the PII so I thought being they both use IDE hard drives I could just pop the drive from the PII into the PIV as a slave and just copy away. The PII drive has window 2000 and the PIV has XP Pro. Trying to network them was impossible, at least for me. The problem I have is the PIV won't run the drive from the PII. I tried running just the Win 2000 drive in the PIV by itself and got a error message saying I need to run scandsk (I think). Why won't the Win 2000 drive run on the other PC? Still works fine on the PII. Oh yea, the PIV has a drive in it with Win XP on it like the one that won't run on the PIV. Both are WD 80 GB drives. Thanks for any help.

Pete
Yes i would check the jumpers as that seems most likely to be the problem. Trying to run the PII drive in your P4 machine won't work because the correct drivers are not there for the motherboard. When you tried to network them together the network name has to be the same for it to work.

[Peter Stahl]

Having these jumpers set correctly is priority #1. It's important that your P4 boots properly so it can see and access the secondary drive. It's hard to diagnose without being there.

Another way is to by an external drive adapter. This will allow you to use any standard internal IDE hard drive and make it an external. Once inserted into the adapter it connects to any USB port on your PC, then you'll have access to it.

Bob

I'll have to check the jumpers tomorrow. Didn't think of the external drive adapter, I'll have to check them out.

[Peter Stahl]

Yes i would check the jumpers as that seems most likely to be the problem. Trying to run the PII drive in your P4 machine won't work because the correct drivers are not there for the motherboard. When you tried to network them together the network name has to be the same for it to work.

Charles, I didn't think about it like that. Didn't realize it loaded drivers for all the hardware when you installed the OS. Should I be able to run it as a slave drive?

[Peter Stahl]

I jumpered the drive from the PII as a slave drive and it worked. Never thought to do this, thanks for the help. I've always jumpered them when I bought them but didn't think about it. Still gonna look into the external drive adapters, will be nice to have for back-ups. Thanks everyone for your replies.

[Curt Harms]

I jumpered the drive from the PII as a slave drive and it worked. Never thought to do this, thanks for the help. I've always jumpered them when I bought them but didn't think about it. Still gonna look into the external drive adapters, will be nice to have for back-ups. Thanks everyone for your replies.

I have a 5.25" external USB enclosure. I have a DVD-RW in it and rails so I can mount 3.5" H.D.'s in it as well. CD-RW/DVD-RW's seem like viable backup/file transfer options, as well as a way to store critical data off site, e.g. safe deposit box. I don't know how long you can be certain of data on removable media being readable.

Of course, there's another complication--SATA. Most enclosures don't have connectors for both formats, and many new systems come with SATA drives. Life is never simple:D.

HTH

Curt

[Russ Filtz]

With some older BIOS's, you may have to manually set the secondary HD. Sounds like it might be detecting it though. My bet is on the jumpers to. Also I think the master should be the first one on the IDE cable, but I've never had a problem swapping locations on the cable.

[Rich Engelhardt]

Hello,
Since the problem has been resolved (jumpers) I don't have anything to add to that part.

However - for the benefit of anyone using the search function that turns up this thread somewhere down the road - there's another jumper setting besides master/slave.
The other setting is C/S - cable select.
C/S requires a special cable. You can distinguish it from a "standard" IDE/EIDE cable by looking for a small cut out near the connector.
All HP and Compaq units use C/S.

Rich -
(who "one of these days" is going to find the time to transfer all the junk off of the 20MB <yep MB> and assorted other drives I've accumulated over the last 17 years):D
LOL! Anybody have a "need" for a 286 motherboard?
How about a CGA monitor? :D
360K floppy's?
170K floppy's?
Bread board with a couple of melted holes?
555 timer - missing the upper half - (see above bread board):D
100MB Zip disks? (Got a ton of them!)
Pentium 60 - complete system?
Non -P/S 2 keyboard - comes with an A/B switch :D
40MB Seagate ST?
60 watt P/S for an IBM?
360k full height IBM floppy drive that needs aligned?
LOL! 8 bit Arcnet card?!? ( I'll even toss in some RG connectors)
(Actually - that's kind of a sad one. It's an old Thomas Conrad. Darned thing was something like $1200.00 way back when.)

[Tom Veatch]

...
However - for the benefit of anyone using the search function that turns up this thread somewhere down the road - there's another jumper setting besides master/slave.
The other setting is C/S - cable select.
C/S requires a special cable. You can distinguish it from a "standard" IDE/EIDE cable by looking for a small cut out near the connector.
All HP and Compaq units use C/S.



Yeah, "Cable Select"! That's what I was trying to get at with the "auto-sensing" reference in my post.:o

Well, I did say it had been a while since I stirred the innards of a PC.

[Peter Stahl]

Bought a COMPUSA 3.5" External Hard Drive Enclosure and now I can transfer files easily from the old drives that were in my PII. Had a 10 GB and a 80 GB drive in there. Easy to use as a finger (USB) drive. Thanks again for all the replies. Always get lot of good advice here, even for Wood Working stuff!:)