Maxtor D740-6L 20 Gigs hard drive issue

http://www.maxtor.com/_files/maxtor/en_us/documentation/jumper_settings/style_c.htm

If this is a new drive and you are setting the drive up as a slave, you will have to partition the drive.

If you already have WinXP running, the new drive should be set as slave and detected using Disk Management.  You can format it there.

I can't boot my computer even though this hard drive is set as a slave

Did you set the other hard drive as master?

there is the third choice here.

Most likely your original drive was set to cable select.
set the jumper on the 20 gig drive to CS and plug it into the middle connector.

Check your bios to make sure that both drives are configured as master and slave on that paticular IDE channel.

If your main drive was a Western Digital, running it by itself means it should have been jumpered as Single.  As soon as you connected a second drive to it, you need to change the jumper to master.

for akboss: I tried your approach , and still can't reboot

for Callandor : Yes my main drive is western digital, but there is one thing I would like to mention; I put another hard drive as a slave and the computer booted with no problem and recognized both hard drives. So if there is any jumper configuration for both hardrives, please let me know about it.

Master hard drive: WDC WD400BB-EAO

If the system will boot when you remove this drive, try the drive by itself, just to see if it will boot.  If it won't, try it in another system.  It is possible you have a new drive that is faulty.

You should definitely set the jumper of the Western Digital to master.  The time you got a second drive to boot may have been a lucky coincidence.

http://wdc.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/wdc.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=84&p_created=1005005461&p_sid=aM3utVkh&p_lva=&p_sp=cF9zcmNoPTEmcF9zb3J0X2J5PSZwX2dyaWRzb3J0PSZwX3Jvd19jbnQ9MjUmcF9zZWFyY2hfdHlwZT1zZWFyY2hfZm5sJnBfY2F0X2x2bDE9MTIzJnBfcGFnZT0xJnBfc2VhcmNoX3RleHQ9anVtcGVyIHNldHRpbmdz&p_li=

http://wdc.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/wdc.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=946&p_created=1049900289&p_sid=fR5JtVkh&p_lva=&p_sp=cF9zcmNoPTEmcF9zb3J0X2J5PSZwX2dyaWRzb3J0PSZwX3Jvd19jbnQ9MjUmcF9zZWFyY2hfdHlwZT1zZWFyY2hfZm5sJnBfY2F0X2x2bDE9MTIzJnBfcGFnZT0xJnBfc2VhcmNoX3RleHQ9anVtcGVyIHNldHRpbmdz&p_li=

For Callandor:  I disconnected the previous hard drive (the good one) that was set as a master  and reset the maxtor  as a master ,but couldn't get my machine to boot.