Hard Drive Io Error

[electrozebra]

I have 2 IDE hard drives.

The 1st drive is the boot drive is set to Master.

The 2nd drive has no jumper.

Sometimes the computer will freeze or not boot up unless I unplug the power to the 2nd drive, then all is OK and the computer boots up. I presume this is becasue there is no jumper to set the 2nd drive to Slave.

To resolve this problem I got a jumper and set the 2nd drive to Slave. When the 2nd drive is set to slave it gives an IO error and I cannot access the data. The BIOS shows the 2nd drive. Control panel, System also shows the 2nd drive. Yet it gives this IO error. There are no bad sectors.

Any ideas why, please?

[thaimite]

Are the 2 drives connected to a single cable? Most computers have 2 IDE controllers and if the drives are on the same controller (single cable) then they should be set as Master and Slave) but if on different controllers then both would be master, depending on other devices on the cable such as DVD or CD drive etc.

Many drives autodetect, but the need to check the instructions printed on the drive itself

[Supernova]

Is this an older computer? If so, check for BIOS updates for the motherboard. Some older BIOSes have a 32GB limit. I also have a legacy machine with 3 IDE hard drives; two of them configured as slave devices. No problems using them with or without jumpers (including cable select).

Also keep in mind, an unreadable partition table can result in I/O errors.

[electrozebra]

Is this an older computer? If so, check for BIOS updates for the motherboard. Some older BIOSes have a 32GB limit. I also have a legacy machine with 3 IDE hard drives; two of them configured as slave devices. No problems using them with or without jumpers (including cable select).

Also keep in mind, an unreadable partition table can result in I/O errors.

No problem with the size of the drives. I have had 80+ gb drives on this computer.

As to an unreadable partition teh 2nd drive works fine with no jumper but it causes the feeze.

[electrozebra]

Are the 2 drives connected to a single cable? Most computers have 2 IDE controllers and if the drives are on the same controller (single cable) then they should be set as Master and Slave) but if on different controllers then both would be master, depending on other devices on the cable such as DVD or CD drive etc.

Many drives autodetect, but the need to check the instructions printed on the drive itself

I have 2 IDE controllers.

The 2 drives are on the same cable which is why I set the main drive to Master and the 2nd to slave. But it is only when I set the 2nd to Slave instead of cable select that it gives an IO error.

As I said, System picks up the drive as does the BIOS. That is why it is odd to get the IO error.