ATA/IDE hardrive help?

Question

I just got a Maxtor DiamondMax 16 120gb and my vista gateway won't recognize it. Can someone plz help me?

Answer 1

The previous poster is correct in that you must set this drive differently on the IDE/ATA bus.

I usually avoid putting harddrives together on the same bus. Connect your DiamondMax to the IDE ribbon cable that is shared by your CD/DVD drive.

Look at the back of your CD/DVD drive for a jumper pin arrangement. Yes, this means taking it out of the case! You want it to work, right? ;)

Ok...now arrange that little jumper in the back so that it is set to MASTER for the CD. Now look at your Maxtor and do the same, except set it to SLAVE. Each device has a handy little graphic sticker that demonstrates how to set the jumper correctly. You need to understand that each manufacturer does things differently. Most likely, each device is set to MASTER which negates the 2nd one on the chain (your disk!)

I have to ask: Did you plug the 4 pin molex power connector to the disk? Sorry if that insults you but some people miss that step. You gotta power the disk!

If you want, you can go into your BIOS and check to see if it sees your disk. Just watch the post information on the black splash screen. It should show you the connected devices and you should see Maxtor in the list now. Don't sweat it if you dont, just go on to the OS if you have to.

In XP, right click your "My Computer" and choose "Manage"

A new window appears

Now click on "Disk Manager"

In here, you should see your 120gb volume BUT it is not formatted yet. Simply right click the graphical black outlined bar and choose "format" ... *PLEASE* for gods sake be sure you are choosing your Maxtor drive and not another disk. You cannot format your OS disk here, so that is safe.

That should do it.

Answer 2

so some distance as i understand there aren't any length limitations on XP, so it is going to paintings high quality. contained in the case thatthere are, you could continuously partiton the rigidity into segments and then living house windows will be high quality with that. That changed into what we had to do back at the same time as there turned right into a 300MB decrease contained in the win 3.a million and 95 days. XP should be able to attempt this high quality contained in the rigidity administration snap in, yet you could also use courses like Partition Magic to attempt this.

Answer 3

Do you have the jumpers set correctly. The "C" drive should be "Master", and the second drive should be set to "Slave". Also, you will probably need to format the new drive. There should be some software that came with the new drive that will do that for you.