Question : Problem: Hard Drive Gone

I can't access one of my hard drives.  It's gone.  Well not gone but inaccessable to me thru my OS, windows 2000 pro, and the command prompt.

It's less than a year old, made by Western D and 100 g. and as soon as the sun rises I will call their tech support but it seems to me the thing is dead and my only hope is that the os went south and the drive is fine.  just a hope.

any suggestions?

oh and yeah, what's in the box?  An Athlon XP 1600 cpu with an SIS motherboard....gee i can't remember, its the one with only one chip thing.. but as soon as my 3 year old goes to bed I will look up the manual that came with the mb.  PC133 ram, 500 something megs.  Anything other info you need to help me? I will get it.  the os, of course is on another WD drive.  I think i have the latest service pack for it (windows 2000).

thanks, with such little info I will be amazed if anyone can help but I will be very grateful if i can access my drive since i don't do back ups very often.
 

Answer : Problem: Hard Drive Gone

Lani,

The PRIMARY EIDE/IDE connector SHOULD ALWAYS get the 80-wire cable. This cable is very specific as to what goes to which connector. BLACK and GREY, as you already know, are for the master and slave drives. The BLUE goes to the motherboard. It DOES NOT matter if you jumper the drives as master/slave or cable select.

The 40-wire ordinary cable is ORIGINALLY DESIGNED or CONFIGURED to have the master drive on the middle connector and the slave on the end connector. Others would do the opposite. Well, it does not really matter as long as the jumpers are set to master and slave.

Although there has not been a fix standard as to the orientation of the master and slave with respect to the 40-wire cable, most, if not, all drive makers would suggest putting the master in the middle and the slave on the end connector. You can verify this by calling Western Digital.

When to use CABLE SELECT (CSEL/CS)? You can use this if you have the following:

1. Drive/s that supports 'Cable Select' and must be jumpered as such.
2. A 'Cable Select' ribbon cable should be used. If there are no markings on it indicating which is the master(0) or slave(1), you can test it by checking the continuity of wire 28. This pin is not connected to one of the connectors.
3. A host adapter connector with wire 28 grounded.

I hope everything is clear up to this point. =)

Please do yourself and your PC a favor. Let your hard drives use the 80-wire cable and connected to PRIMARY and the ATAPI drives with the standard cable (or you can use another 80-wire) connected to SECONDARY.

=)