hard drive not being recognized?

[file cabinet]

alright.. so I've got a drive .. it's plugged in.. it's set to primary. there is one ide cable that connects it to the motherboard..
but it isn't recognized at all.. when it boots up it shows a blank spot where the serial/blah should be.
I did try putting it as a slave of another drive and the IDE cables and all that were setup right.. and it didn't even show in the bios thing when the computer started.
now, the hard drive may not be formatted properly... could this be why? also, how would I know what drive it is? the primary hard drive is hde.

I can do some basic things with hardware but that's about it..

[Claverhouse]

You've checked the jumper setting ?

Since you say hda I'm guessing this is Linux, about which I'm lost: but try swapping the HD's power cable. Also you could start up with a Windows start-up disk, to see if that recognises it.


now, the hard drive may not be formatted properly... could this be why? also, how would I know what drive it is? the primary hard drive is hde.

How did you format it ? On a different machine or this one ? Did you partition it ? How ? ( eg: Fdisk ? ).

I don't get the last bit. If you've only got one drive, that's it. If you've got two one is set to master ( C: ) and the other is slave. Cable-Select is the best way to go. Check all the jumper settings.


I know that they are all supposed to be self-setting, but have you gone into BIOS and tried setting the values there ?


Claverhouse :ph34r:

I can do hardware, but not programming...

[int]

Regardless of the formatting the BIOS should see it.

Go into the CMOS and poke around - what's the IDE controller set to? If it's on "auto detect" make sure the disk's jumper is either on "cable select" or "Master." Check the disk manufacturer's website to see if it can use manual settings, which you can plug into CMOS.

Make sure your BIOS is up to date as well - newer disks are often not supported in an older BIOS but a simple update should fix that.

Is the drive cable a good one?

[file cabinet]

drive was working previously but I had swapped it on for some reason..
I believe I may have formatted it with cfdisk at one point.
It's not on cable select... it's probably on master.
the drive cable worked previously
everything had worked before. the computer hasn't changed really, I swapped out the drive..
I had two drives.. they were both primary.
I switched around with'm to make one of'm bootable. I took out one of the hard drives.
Now I want to put the drive back in and get it mounted for linux..
I tried setting the jumpers to slave then putting it on the same cable as the other hard drive... but that didn't do anything.
now I switched it to being primary/master or whatever (the same as the other drive) and used a different IDE cable to connect it to the motherboard. now when it boots up and lists out the hard drives it says:
ibm-hc23432423423
No drive
(blank)
No drive
it's a RAID motherboard... I had it in a RAID once.. I went into the RAID app but it only listed one of the drives..

I guess I'll take a closer look at it later..
I can't remember is the BIOS the first one that pops up and you press delete to get to? or is that CMOS?
to get into the RAID controller app I have to press CTRL+H when it lists out the hard drives.. I think they said it's a BIOS..
I suppose I could just look up the words bios and cmos and figure it out.. oh well...

aha

In computing the term CMOS is often used to mean the non-volatile memory that stores motherboard BIOS information. This was called the CMOS RAM or just the CMOS because it usually used a low-power CMOS memory chip, powered by a small battery. The term remains common but has become a misnomer as nearly all modern computer components except the "CMOS memory" are constructed in CMOS technology. For the "CMOS", in modern computers, flash memory is usually employed
src http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CMOS

aha

In computing, the Basic Input-Output System or BIOS is computer interface code that locates and loads the operating system into RAM. It provides low-level communication, operation and configuration to the hardware of a system, which at a minimum drives the keyboard and provides primitive output to a display. The BIOS is usually written in Assembly language native to the processor.
src http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BIOS

[int]

The RAID controller will have it's own BIOS. CMOS is the one you'd hit delete to get to. CMOS adjusts BIOS settings on the motherboard (this is what the A+ cert learns you :rolleyes: ).

But you figured that out.

You could try putting the troubled disk as the main (just pull the main for the time being) and partitioning/formatting to confirm it's working. If it is, you've probably just got some BIOS settings to adjust to make it a secondary. Especially if you changed something.

Did you put the drive back to *exactly* where it was before? Have you added any other hardware in the meantime?

[heeroyuy]

RAID on your motherboard, hm? I'd be sure that all the BIOS settings for IDE and RAID aren't confused about where drives are etc. If you get desperate I'd just reflash the CMOS and see if that helps. Make sure the drive is receiving power etc, and if it still doesn't work take it to another computer and see if the BIOS in that machine can see it. If so, make sure you flashed the CMOS and try it again. If it still fails my suggestion would be make an example out of it with a bat so the other computers learn the cost of misbehaving.

[SheepDog]

I hate to state the obvious, but did you make sure the bios is set to auto-detect for that controller?