My computer situation is confusing, because I never have enough money
to replace the entire thing with a brand new one so every now and then
splash out on a half measure, and it usually goes badly wrong !

My 'main' PC is an old Dell which has a 40gig HD, and a crap processor

Last year I bought second hand a newer Gateway with a better processor
but only a 4 gig HD. I spent months setting it up for the peripherals
as it was extremely argumentative with me! Eventually it sort of works
now, but won't do internet (the ethernet card doesn't play ball) so
that's done on the old PC

The aim was to merge them. I have many gig of family vids and pics on
the older PC which won't allow me to use a DVD writer because the
sound card software conflicts with Nero 6. So, I decided in order to
sort this out to get a new 80 gig HD, slave it off the old PC, then
copy the pics and vids, then slave it off the new PC and write to DVD.

But I've failed at the first step ! The 80 gig HD won't slave off the
40 gig HD. I've set the jumpers as the two HDs say on each one (eg for
slave it says none, for master with slave on the 40gig it says put in
the middle of the 5 pairs). I've tried telling the BIOS there's a
second primary HD, and I've put the leads where I think they go.

The pc boots up, the new HD spins, but it won't appear as a drive. Its
a Maxtor 80 gig Diamond Max if that's of any help.

I have no idea what I'm doing wrong or how to tell. Does the data
cable not work ? Are the jumpers wrong ? Is the BIOS wrong ? Is the
new HD just no use for me ?

It could be that you cable is bad, that actually happens alot. Or it
could be that you have the hdd formated different the what you need.
Your info here does not say what version of windows you are running
and it doesnt say weither or not you went ntfs or fat for your hdd. If
you can post your complete system specs. I am including a link for you
with some bare bone systems. If you look you can find some great
deals.

Barebone kits.
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/category/category_tlc.asp?CatId=31

I run Windows Me on the 40 gig drive

Do I need to format the new 80 gig drive ? I kinda assumed it came
pre-formatted... How do I format it when the computer doesn't know its
there ?

Thanks for the barebones idea - I recently looked into that from
Novatech but I didn't understand the difference between different set
ups really, or what I would do with it when I got it. I would think
the one certain thing would be I would take the old out, put the new
in and it would fail to work !!!

I?d go with david1977 in that the formatting may be different. Your
original could indeed be FAT16. You can (I think) run different format
standards on different IDEs -- have you tried the 80 megger on the
other IDE as a master?

Even with the same formatting, not always will two disks be
compatible. Have you run fdisk though? That should be able to see it
and you can go from there.

Check too that your BIOS can cope with 80 megs. A flash may be
available for download.

Hope we haven?t deprived a researcher of the award but maybe you have
been saved $20 :-)

Best

If neither of the other two suggestions work try FDISK and split it
into 2 logical drives of 40 gigs a piece.See here
http://www.computerhope.com/fdiskhlp.htm

Do I need to remove the main HD and set up the new one as the master,
and then run FDisk ? It doesnt seem to be on the ME boot disk so
presumably I can use a 98SE boot disk instead ? What command words do
I use for this ? I know I've used it in the distant past, but its been
a goodly while !

Thanks

Hi there

Setting it up alone as master, I've fdisked it and formatted it (it
recognised it as 78 gig it would seem) but it still won't slave. I had
a few old hard drives lying around from previous upgrades and managed
to get one of them to slave OK so it seems that the IDE cable works
OK. Is it a question of jumpers ? Maybe the two hard drives with
differing jumper instructions each are confused ?

OK, it was a jumper problem - it needed to be over CS as 'cable
select' for some reason. Great, at least that part's been completed.
Thank you for all your help.