A while back at Christmas, I got a new 120 GB maxtor hard drive. I was using a 80 GB Maxtor hard drive as the primary master, but i moved it down to primary slave. I also had a 40 GB maxtor HDD i had as a secondary slave (and a 52X burner as secondary master). Problem was after a few hours after plugging in the 120 (and changing the jumpers), i started getting errors using my 80 gig hard drive. i managed to copy some stuff off of it over to my 120 gig drive, but then a little while after that, my drive totally stopped working.
windows would recognize it, the bio recognized it, fdisk recognized its full size, maxtors drive setup recognized its full size, and partition magic recognized it. the ones that didnt mention the full size typically said it was an 8 gig hard drive (instead of 80).
i finally sent it off about a week ago to get replaced, and i got a call back from a tech at the place i sent it to that i simply had the wrong jumpers.

i am pretty sure they were right, cause i looked at maxtors site and chose the jumpers setup as they listed for my drive to be a slave. also, i was wondering if the computer would recognize, the drive with the wrong jumpers, if they were set wrong, and even function some of the time also with wrong jumpers.
question is (just to make sure you get what i was asking), would the computer recognize the drive with the wrong jumpers, and is it even possible for the drive to function a little while with the wrong jumpers? if not, were they just BSing me to try to get me from replacing the drive?

okay, i just checked out resellerratings.com on this company ("the computer center") and they have some of the most god awful reviews ive ever seen

my previous 2 hardware questions stand, but the BS question is pretty much answered for sure. also, any tips i should mention when i call them back again about the drive (im not sure if they got all the info that i originally emailed them about what i did, but anything will hopefully help make this quick as possible)

I had this some years ago (my first hdd install). Both drives were jumpered as master. Sometime the BIOS would recognise one, sometimes both. It ended up corrupting both drives.

Hate to say m8, but it isn't actually the shop's fault this time around. hehe This issue is posted on M$' website, will see if i can find the link. :)


Think there was more than 1 issue reported on this, but anyway, here's one (http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=KB;en-us;q254769)

i didn't mean they messed it up (thats how i interpreted you saying its not the shops fault)

also, wouldnt that indicate a hardware error, by looking at the MS article you posted in your reply

and from the ratings, i do believe they are right. i called once, said the guy i was supposed to talk to wasnt there. called again a few days later, they said he was on the phone and he would give me a call soon as he finished his call. i never got a call back yet, and this was last week

btw, windows 2000 does have service pack 3 installed, and all available updates for it are installed--forgot to mention that. i also tried it in another computer, still got the same info from it, and i tried it both under win98 and winxp pro & home