My dads computer was working fine until he installed a dvd burner and some extra memory but now he can't read the data on the hardrive at all, infact it seems to be blank, yet there was a ton of stuff on there before hand. The only way we could evn get the computer to boot up was by having another harddisc with windows preinstalled on it.
Could this be a compatibility issue between the 2 diffrent sets of memory chips or could it be because the drive is not connected correctlly. We really need to solve this as we have many family photos on the disc and also many of my mums manuscripts.
We thought about taking it to pc world but don't know if that would help at all. As i say we can access the disc its just it appears to be blank.
Please help.
2007-04-18 13:27:46 · 11 answers · asked by Jason C 1 in Computers & Internet ➔ Hardware ➔ Other - Hardware
*you say he installed a dvd burner i take it you mean hard ware not software has he put it on the same tap as the hard drive if so the computer is trying to read it as a hard drive it has to go on the other tap and be set as ether primary or slave
2007-04-18 21:33:18 · answer #1 · answered by simonjohnlaw 5 · 0⤊ 1⤋
I have seen this many, many times over the years. It has always come down to the master/slave relationship for your drives. A typical IDE interface can support 2 devices. One of these devices is referred to as the master, the other as the slave. There are a couple of ways to mess this up. One involves little jumpers on the back of the drives. If you remember changing these on both your hard drive and the dvd burner when you installed the dvd burner, or if you remember needing to change the jumper on the hard drive when you added the dvd drive, then these jumper settings will be at the root of your problem. We'll get to that in just a minute.
Another way that the master/slave relationship can get goofed up is if your hard disk was the only device on the cable prior to installing the dvd drive, the hard drive might also have been set via the little jumpers on the end to "only drive" or some other type wording.
A third way the master/slave relationship can get goofed up is if the wide cable connecting the PC to the hard drive and the dvd drive is doing the master/slave relationship for you. If one of the cable connectors on the hard drive or dvd drive is black and the one to the other device is gray, you have a cable that is selecting the master/slave relationship for you. This may in particular have happened if you replaced the old cable with a new one that came with your dvd drive.
So what to do?
First, disconnect the wide cable from the back of both drives.
Second, determine how the jumpers are set on the edge of the drives to say if the drive is master, slave, cable select, or only drive. Set the hard drive to master, then set the dvd drive to slave. You may need to remove the drives in order to read the top where it usually shows how to set the jumpers.
Third, check the wide cable. If 1 of the connectors that go on the drives is black and the other is gray (usually at the end of the cable), then you have a cable that sets the relationship. The black connector (usually this is the first drive connector, ie the connector in the middle of the cable) will need to be connected to your hard drive. The other connector (gray) would hook up to your dvd drive.
If the wide cable did not have different colored connectors for the drives, then it won't matter which is connected to which drive.
A very obscure possibility is that the wide cable is also installed "up side down". This hasn't normally been possible with the cables and connectors used today, but even a few years ago they weren't keyed and you could actually "flip" the cable. Be sure the marked wire on the wide cable is going to the proper place ("pin 1") on each of the cables' connections at the drives.
This should solve your problem, if not please email me.
2007-04-18 22:46:05 · answer #2 · answered by gcos7 3 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Someone mentioned that it could be looking at the wrong partition... A very good possibility. If you click Go to Control Panel and access "Administrative Tools". It's under "Performance and Maintenance". Open "Computer Management" and go down to "Storage"-"Disk Management". Depending on the computer manufacturer you may have a partition on the original drive that only holds a couple hundred MB of data and contains nothing. Sometimes after changing Master/Slave settings the wrong partition gets the drive letter. Here you can assign a drive letter to any partition. You might also check those jumper settings. I assume that you now have two HD and two CD/DVD drives and they are all IDE. I suggest that you either assign both HDs to the primary IDE channel and set one as master and one as slave (depending on which one you want to use as your primary boot drive). And assign your CD/DVD drives to the secondary IDE channel and set one as Master and the other as Slave. Your bios will look at the drives in this order: Primary-Master, Primary-Slave, Secondary-Master, Secondary-Slave. By default it should boot from the first HD it comes too. The important thing though, is that you just have one master and one slave on each IDE channel.
2007-04-18 13:59:06 · answer #3 · answered by benareese 2 · 0⤊ 0⤋
this is the problem your dad did not set up the DVD burner as a slave drive the hard drive should be the master and the DVD should be the slave
ask him to check the jumpers at the back of each drive the hard drive jumper should be set on MA (master) and the DVD should be set on SL (Slave)
then re boot the system go into the Bios and check that the drives are set right in the bios
2007-04-18 13:35:36 · answer #4 · answered by Carling 7 · 1⤊ 0⤋
It could be that the MBR (Master Boot Record) has been corrupted in some way.
If you can boot from the Windows XP and go into the recovery console and get to a C:\> prompt you may be able to fix it that way.
Another method is to put the old hard disk in the PC as a slave drive. Download a program called Testdisk and let it scan your old hard disk. It can rebuild the MBR amongst other things. It should display all the folders and files as well.
2007-04-18 13:47:43 · answer #5 · answered by Anonymous · 1⤊ 0⤋
you might have to go to the bios
hit f1 or f2 when restarting and see if a hard drive is listed.if you instaLLed cd roms and didn't change the jumpers to slave for one of them it will not work right
if the memory is wrong you might get a few beeps when stating up take the memory out
check the jumper on harddrive.there should be a diagram on[ it set to master]
set the jumpers for cd rom
2007-04-18 13:40:37 · answer #6 · answered by pkrp5 5 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Look at the master / slave jumpers on your hard drive and dvd drive.
Unplug the new drives (DVD and HD) and try to access the hard drive data.
You might be looking at a partician on the old drive that does not contain your data.
2007-04-18 13:33:38 · answer #7 · answered by Automation Wizard 6 · 0⤊ 0⤋
There should be 2 different IDE channels. You can connect 2 drives to each channel, but one needs to be set to Master, and the other to Slave. I suspect that your problem lies here. So if one of the CD drives is set to Master, you would want to change the jumper on the hard drive to Slave and it should be ok for you afterwards. Hope this helps.
2007-04-18 13:32:10 · answer #8 · answered by benji 3 · 1⤊ 1⤋
I don't think it's the ram you added. I'd look again at your cable on the dard drive and dvd burner. make sure the cable is plugged in the right way on the hard drive. make sure the hard drive's jumper is in the master position.
2007-04-18 13:33:00 · answer #9 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
What OS are you running on the computer trying to read the other HDD if you are run XP in fat32 format and the other HDD is NTFS you will not be able to read anything on the drive. No if you are running XP and Fat32 you can convert your entire hdd to NTFS (without data loss) and you will be able to see every file on the other HDD...Thanks
2007-04-19 14:45:56 · answer #10 · answered by computer_surplus2005 5 · 0⤊ 0⤋