Another vote for looking into the 127gb limit. Just bought two 120gb drives for an older linux machine after researching sites like this one and finding that my machine couldn’t handle anything larger. If your machine is not so young, you might have to buy a controller for the drive.
Just FYI, once the hardware problems are sorted out:
Do not use xcopy for anything more than simple file copying operations. The big problem with this command is that it does not maintain the DOS short filenames correctly as it copies. You could have a folder called “Bitchin’ Pictures” (created first) and one called “Bitchin’ Music”, bearing short filenames of “BITCHI~1” and “BITCHI~2” respectively. When they are copied, the short filenames will likely be reversed (i.e. “Bitchin’ Pictures” would now be called “BITCHI~2”).
Not a big deal for simple copy stuff, but when you are copying major program installations, you are courting disaster since Windows still does a lot of stuff behind the scenes with short filenames on command lines.
True,
could be your BIOS is old and doesn’t like such a large drive, but the first thing I thought of is just simply setting it up in BIOS. The Dell’s I work on, on a daily basis SATA or IDE randomly require me to turn the relevant drives on and disable the non-relevant ones.
Maybe you could be so lucky and succeed with such advice- so I just thought I’d throw this short paragraph your way.
I went into the BIOS, and it insists that neither drive is installed. I bought an IDE Controller card and put it in, connecting both IDE cables to it, but now when the computer boots up, it gives me the same messages as before (only now it also says it can’t find the secondary drives can’t be found and then some stuff comes up for the hard drive controller that says it detects the DVD-ROM and CDR drives, but it says nothing about the hard drives. Then it gives me a message about hitting F3 to enter config (which doesn’t work) and then it gives me a message about “Press F1 to try again, F2 to enter Setup” and if I hit F2 it takes me into the BIOS.
Exactly how did you perform this copying? Did you mount the new drive as your second drive, then dragged files from the old drive to the new drive? Or did you use some utility to copy all the contents from the old drive to the new drive? Are you sure that the new drive is bootable?
Hm. Guess I didn’t explain that part. I used Western Digital’s Data Lifeguard Utility V11.1. Basically, I installed the new drive as the slave, ran the program, had it set up the new drive as the new boot drive, it copied everything from the old drive to the new drive, I shut down the system, switched the jumper settings and the hard drives, booted up, and it wouldn’t work after that.
Also, like I said, this happened earlier this week with a couple of my old drives, right after I had switched out a slave drive I was testing (I might have damaged the motherboard when I did this)
A new hard drive should come with 80 conductor cables (Ultra ATA), and IIRC the master connector is the one at the end on those. In any case, they’re color coded: blue goes into the motherboard, black is the master, and grey is the slave.
The copying should’ve worked if you used the utility that came with the drive.
Try plugging the hard drives into the secondary IDE connector on your motherboard, where your CD/DVD drives are now. If that works, something’s wrong with your primary IDE controller - either the connector/board is broken, or it wasn’t plugged in straight.
Check the cables and jumpers again if you’re not totally sure - if you set them for cable select, you’ll never have to check the jumpers again. Pin 1 on the IDE cables should be marked, usually with a red or black stripe, and that edge should face the power connector. Make sure the power cables are connected (I’ve forgotten a few times). You should be able to hear the drives spin up when you boot with the case open… if not, try a different power cable.
I’m no whiz at this stuff cuz when something is broken and I’m there, it usually means I’ve come to change out this part. If I don’t have it, I order it.
Anyway, I think it speaks volumes that the BIOS is telling you there’s no HDDs. I would focus on this problem first, because regardless of whether your migration worked right or not BIOS will still tell you if it “sees” a HDD. I take it you’ve already switched the primary location just to see if your BIOS will detect the 2nd drive as a primary even?
There are only 3 things I can suggest, hopefully I’m not over-simplifying this:
It’s your HDD
It’s your MB
Your Bios is not updated to the latest version or has no updates to support your desired configuration. (would be doubtful if it’s from this decade)
Your 4th optional: if you’ve got no decent diagnostic software, you’re going to need to bring it to someone who does; believe me it’s a lot less frustrating.
I realize everything I’m saying is pretty common sense stuff, but you need to get your computer into a state where it can at least recognize 1 HDD and then by process of elimination check off what works, what’s being detected and see for a fact that it’s only when you try and piggy-back your drives that you’re having the trouble.
We’ll just cross our fingers that you did nothing serious to your board.
One last thing F2 for configuration is usually a good thing because it allows you to go in and arrange things the way they should be; would be a red flag for me if nothing showed-up there for me to work with. You’ve got have your component recognized before you can do anything with it functionality-wise. Good luck with this, I’ll tell you straight out- technicianI may be, but I brought my computer to the shop for this heh
Pretty sure it’s not 1 because I had this same problem with the two older drives (that I had in my system for quite a while) briefly earlier this week. It’s not 3 because I checked and the BIOS is updated to the latest version. Probably 2 is what I’m thinking. Right after I take a shower and grab something to eat, I’m gonna do 4 in all likelyhood.
I can get into the BIOS setup and enable or disable the IDE stuff, but all that disabling it does it makes it stop showing me the error messages (though it still won’t boot to Windows). The new IDE controller card didn’t work, but I’m thinking that it possibly wasn’t meant as a replacement for the motherboard controller, because the instructions say I need to boot into Windows to install the drivers first :smack:
OK, found the problem. This was an example of your typical PEBMAC error that computers often suffer from. I had the jumpers set wrong on the master hard drive.
Guy at the computer shop on campus fixed in 20 minutes what I was trying to fix for 2 days.
Grr… ignore my post re: it’s fixed. Damn thing started happening again. Only now it detects the CD drives and not the hard drive, and a hard boot fixed it for now.
heh