Why won't an HD that works as a master in one computer, work as a master in an other comuter?

Question

I have two older desktop PCs both with one HD each. I want use them together in one desktop, one as a master and one as a slave. One HD is 10 GB and has a W2K OS and the other is 20 GB and has 98SE OS and files I need to keep. Each of these HD’s work as masters in separate computers, but I want to make the 10GB HD with W2K the master, and the 20GB HD with 98SE the slave in the PC that originally had the 20GB HD with 98SE as the master. When I do this I receive the Blue screen stating something about "If this is the first time you've received this message...and run CHKDSK \F". Also, the 10GB HD won’t work as a Single HD in the PC that originally used the 20GB HD as the master. Any thoughts as to why the 10GB won’t work as the master. Sorry for the confusion.

Answer 1

its because the drivers that it is loading is for a different computer. if you want to use both hds on a single computer which had the 20gig as its original hd, make sure that the computer will load the correct drivers that is installed on your 20 gig and not on the 10 gig. that is why the 10 gig will not also work singly on your computer which has 20 gig initially.

Answer 2

Sorry if this sounds dumb and very basic, but...

Have you made sure the jumpers on the hard drives are set as Master and Slave appropriately for each drive??? If not, do so and give it another shot.

I don't normally depend on the "cable select" jumper settings when I'm running two hard drives on IDE cables. I always set the master HD jumper to the "master" position and the jumper for the slave drive to "slave". In that way, there are no errors.

It also could be an issue with the OS's and the PC's they came from. Lets say the 10G is from a Compaq and you are now trying to run it on a Dell. It normally won't work because the OS software and the Bios were written for the Compaq and you'd be trying to run them with the Dell bios. They are simply incompatible.

Hope this makes sense!!!

Answer 3

The reason why your computer displays blue screen and has error because your computer BIOS detects the 10 gb HDD that has different settings than the settings of your computer on which you installed this 10 gb HDD. Your 10 gb HDD has still the settings of its previous computer. For this Hard disk to work on the computer with the new settings you need to set it as a master drive then install whatever OS you want to install with it so that the new OS will also install the necessary drivers that are needed by your computer hardwares but make sure that you back up your files like copying it to your 20 gb HDD.