hookup 2nd hard drive !!!help!!! [dell dimension 4100; ; winXP]

[napville2000]

i am trying to install a western digital 8.3 gig hard drive in my computer. the computer came preinstalled with a 20 gig (maxtor) hard drive i believe. i felt on the primary drive and felt the jumpers, so it should be set up as master. the wd had no jumpers, so it was set as slave.

i tried by connecting them to the same cable & used power cable #6 in the computer. when i boot the computer makes a strange noise for two seconds and the only thing that happens is showing the amount of ram, keyboard, mouse & usb connected. it just hangs after that.

i reflashed my bios & it showed neither drive was installed.

if i disconnect the 8.3 gig hard drive (w/ either pulling the power cable out or the connector) the system boots up to windows xp.

could it be a corrupt drive, missing a step or anything.

any help would be greatly appreciated.

[gambit_360]

Make sure you've got the ribbon on the right way and you'll need to detect the new drive under your bios. But what really troubles me is "the wd had no jumpers, so it was set as slave". What do you mean by this? I don't know of any hard drive that doesn't have jumpers to set master/slave. Perhaps the hard drive is simply missing the jumper.

[napville2000]

there was none of those little black things on top of little middle section. not very technical i am not.

[Darkman]

Harddrives are generally sold with the jumpers set to master, if you try to have two drives on the same IDE cable both set to master you will get the problems you are describing.

With the drive you should have received an installation sheet which shows the jumper settings. Jumpers are 6 small metal pins arranged in two rows and three columns . A small plastic coated metal bridge connects one pair of these pins, the pair it connects is the 'jumper setting'.
If you don't have the installation sheet then check the drive near the pins. you'll see some sort of indication to what is what, possibly something like MA for Master SL for Slave and CS for Cable select. Slide the bridge off of the Master setting and onto the two Slave pins, don't use CS as most motherboards don't support it.

[napville2000]

thanks. i didn't think of that so i checked it & it was set to single, i'll pick up a jumper stunt from the store today.

thanks Darkman