jonpikeuk
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New harddrive installation - primary drive not found
My old hard drive (on a dell Dimenson 2400) died and I had to replace the harddrive.
I have opted to install two harddrives in the new PC - the first I installed is a Samsung SATA 160GB harddrive using a Serial ATA card.
In addition I have also installed a Maxtor 120GB ATA IDE harddrive.
I want to use the SATA as the primary harddrive and the ATA as the slave.
Oddly the only configuration that I can find that works is when the ATA drive has the jumpers on the "master" position. There are currently no jumpers on the SATA drive.
The problem I have is that when I boot up:
(A) It takes an age to get through the BIOS
(B) More importantly I get the error "primary drive 1 not found". It then locates the SATA drive but stops that this point until I press F1. Once I do press F1 the system boots up on the SATA drive and the ATA drive is recognised and available
How can I get the PC to boot up without having to press F1 and what is causing the slow BIOS check at the start?
Thanks.
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reboot your system and see how to get into the bios (usually its f2 or delete key) under the first screen (main) change the primary slave to auto and hit enter and it will look for the hard drive. Once its found you can save and exit.
Does you Serial ATA card have an enable BIOS setting. If yes try enabling it and see if if boots from that drive. I know you have an older dell as do I but it may be worth seeing if there is a BIOS upgrade that may help.
Just a note re jumpers - sata doesn't use them. One drive per cable = all master.
Chris B
Chris B