Help Un-slaving a hard drive

[colleyvillesooner]

In my other thread http://www.soonerfans.com/forums/showthread.php?t=72618

I was diagnosing my problem. The computer wasn't recognizing the D:, my slave drive. I wanted to diconnect it. I'm having a little trouble. As you can see in the picture, the bottom drive is the slave, and the top drive is the one I would like to keep as the master. I need to know based on the picture below, how to plug it in to make it only recognize the top hard drive and not the slave. The yellow cable goes from #1, to #2, then to the motherboard. #4 shows a connector that connects the power to the back fan but has to go through #5 to #3, then to the main power supply. Any help? I've tried just unpluggin the lower drive and it doesn't work. Also, when I try to click on D: now it says it isn't formatted. I don't need any info on D:, but I think that a bad hard drive hooked up is what is slowing my coimputer down.

http://img83.imageshack.us/img83/9095/thdsc034744ir.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

[Frozen Sooner]

unplug 2.

Depending on the hard drive that is the master, you may have to change jumper settings on it as well.

[colleyvillesooner]

unplug 2.

Depending on the hard drive that is the master, you may have to change jumper settings on it as well.

Okay, so unplug #2, but leave 4 plugged in?

What is changing the jumper settings?

Do I need to tell the computer in setup that there is no slave?

[Vaevictis]

If all you want to do is make it so that it doesn't recognize drive 2, just unplug it. That's all you should have to do.

You might as well unplug 4 as well, as it'll cut the power to 2; no reason for it to be using power if it's unplugged.

[Vaevictis]

With respect to the jumper settings, if you've got the jumpers on hard drive #1 set to "slave", you may have to switch them to indicate primary or "auto" if available.

You'll need to look up the settings in the manual for the hard drive if that's the case.

(if you'll look in the area between the data cable and the power cable on the hard drive, you should see "jumpers" that can be moved around on pins. Well, usually that's where the jumpers are)

[Frozen Sooner]

In the back of the hard drive, there are some pins. The pins have a jumper on them that lets the drive know if it supposed to be a master, slave, or on some older drive if it's a single drive. Go to the manufacturer's website and punch in the model number and it should have a diagram of the proper settings.

You can leave 4 plugged in or unplug it if you wish.

HDDs are plug and play-Windows will recognize automatically that it's not attached and map drives accordingly.

[Vaevictis]

Also, sometimes, depending on the BIOS, it's possible to disable the secondary drive in the BIOS, and that may suffice as well.

(I don't know how dependant on the BIOS recent versions of windows are for the hard drive config, so it may or may not work)

[Frozen Sooner]

That's a good point, didn't think about disabling in BIOS. Of course, the guy doesn't know what jumper settings are-we probably don't want him rooting around in his BIOS.

Not trying to be mean, but I don't generally recommend messing with the BIOS.

[colleyvillesooner]

That's a good point, didn't think about disabling in BIOS. Of course, the guy doesn't know what jumper settings are-we probably don't want him rooting around in his BIOS.

Not trying to be mean, but I don't generally recommend messing with the BIOS.

Dick. ;)

I know what things are/look like but don't know exaclty what they are called all the time.

I went to the website, found what I was looking for, and hooked the jumper settings up correctly. Unplugged #2 and we're off and running. Thanks for the help! I'll let you know how it's running.

As far as that second drive is concerned, t ofix it would I just hook everything back up and when it ask me to format it hit yes?

[Vaevictis]

If it's really that there's an actual hard drive problem (as opposed to software on the hard drive), then formatting it won't help at all.

Once hard drives start to go bad, really, about the only thing you can do is try to recover whatever data you want to recover, and toss the thing.

[Penguin]

Set the slaves free!!!!!!!!!

[Newbomb Turk]

If it's really that there's an actual hard drive problem (as opposed to software on the hard drive), then formatting it won't help at all.

Once hard drives start to go bad, really, about the only thing you can do is try to recover whatever data you want to recover, and toss the thing.

not necessarily. I didn't read what the original problem was with the #2 drive, but if it has some errors on it, formatting it will mask out the areas with errors.

However, depending on how big the drive is, and considering how cheap they are these days, I might just get rid of it if I were having problems with it. Also depends on how critical the data is on drive #2.

[Vaevictis]

Once you start having enough sectors on the hard drive go bad that you notice it, it's usually time to just toss the thing. Formatting it will work around those areas, but it doesn't solve the root problem which is that you have sectors going bad.

In my experience, once you notice that sectors are going bad, you're probably about to have a snowball effect, and the hard drive will *usually* become useless in short order. Best save yourself the trouble and toss it, IMO.

(Also, I'm a little fuzzy on the details, but my understanding is that manufacturers reserve a certain percentage of sectors which are transparently swapped out for other sectors that go bad. By the time you finally actually notice that sectors are going bad, it usually means that there aren't enough spare sectors to correct the problem. Which, of course, is bad news.)

[Newbomb Turk]

yes - there are spare sectors...plenty of them. I worked for a hard drive manufacturer for years. As we both pointed out though, might just be better to pitch the thing.

[afs]

c:\format

yes

yes

YWIA

[slickdawg]

you mean format c:


:D

[Newbomb Turk]

c:\format

yes

yes

YWIA

you still using DOS?

[afs]

well it's a slave drive, i'm assuming that windows isn't installed on it. so the easiest way is to get to the command prompt and use a DOS format command substituting C: with the appropriate drive designation.

so yes.

[Newbomb Turk]

Well, I'm certainly no computer expert, so I don't want to get into a tech fight with you. But if Windows can format a floppy, or CD without Windows being installed on them, can't Windows format a hard drive without Windows on it?

I sure typed "Windows" a bunch there. :eddie:

[Frozen Sooner]

Windows will format the drive with a Windows partition, making the drive unusable to other operating systems.

It's just easier to do it from DOS than it is in Windows. Microsoft's interface for formatting through Windows is terrible.

[Newbomb Turk]

Windows will format the drive with a Windows partition, making the drive unusable to other operating systems.

It's just easier to do it from DOS than it is in Windows. Microsoft's interface for formatting through Windows is terrible.

#1 - I'd guess most people don't care if a drive is unusable to another operating system.

#2 - That's the way Microsoft wants it. ;)

[Frozen Sooner]

#1-Yeah, I misread your question originally and ended up being too lazy to hit delete.

#2-Yup. They don't want it to be TOO easy to reformat because there's a lot of gomers running around...

[jk the sooner fan]

WWLD

(what would lincoln do) :)

[colleyvillesooner]

still running smooth. I think we got it solved. Thanks team (and Abe)

:D

[yermom]

Windows will format the drive with a Windows partition, making the drive unusable to other operating systems.

It's just easier to do it from DOS than it is in Windows. Microsoft's interface for formatting through Windows is terrible.

i actually prefer the Windows GUI over fdisk/format from the command line

and i usually hate GUI stuff ;)

[Ike]

you are welcome. did you remember to refill the disk fluid? ;)

[Penguin]

That hard drive looks like it has a lot of pr0n on it.

[49r]

That hard drive looks like it has a lot of pr0n on it.

Well, it *is* a Maxtor.

[49r]

And it looks like the slim form factor ones they made a while back. Those drives had terrible problems with heat IIRC, so it's no wonder it was about to fail.

[colleyvillesooner]

And it looks like the slim form factor ones they made a while back. Those drives had terrible problems with heat IIRC, so it's no wonder it was about to fail.

It's pretty old. I took it out of my old computer and used it for storage on my new one.

[49r]

Probably about 30GB, right?

[colleyvillesooner]

Probably about 30GB, right?

I think so.