I Am Lost!

[AlexLah]

Hi all I hope someone can help on this.

Last week my master drive crashed (Maxtor ATA/133 120 GB second one already).

OK no problem I went to Panthip and buy new one, this time a Maxtor SATA 160 GB.

Connect it properly and change the boot menu to boot from CD.

Put original Windows CD in tray and start up. It goes through set up procedure and tell I have to make a partition. OK I choose to make one of 80 GB and continue the process.

After some time I got the message: Windows is not able to locate HD and also have a memory error (unable to read memory).

OK I think I have another HD that I used as slave to back up data. Removed SATA HD and set the jumpers of the slave HD to Master and start again.

OK booting from CD and go through set up procedure, after a while I get the message: No HD found.

Anybody has an idea what I have to do?

Your help very much appreciated!

Kind regards,

Alex

[johng]

Partition and format the drive ....before trying to install windows ?

or maybe the IDE /SATA controller on your mother board is blown ?

are you sure it was really Maxtor ATA/133 120 GB drive that went bad and not the motherboard ?

or maybe both !!

[stumonster]

you will probably find in the bios settings ( delete button at startup ) that it is set for IDE and you need to change it to SATA.

your maxtor drives have a 3 year warranty and are very easy to exchange for a refurbished one - both at pantip or future.

[alexth]

Hi all I hope someone can help on this.

Last week my master drive crashed (Maxtor ATA/133 120 GB second one already).

OK no problem I went to Panthip and buy new one, this time a Maxtor SATA 160 GB.

Connect it properly and change the boot menu to boot from CD.

Put original Windows CD in tray and start up. It goes through set up procedure and tell I have to make a partition. OK I choose to make one of 80 GB and continue the process.

After some time I got the message: Windows is not able to locate HD and also have a memory error (unable to read memory).

OK I think I have another HD that I used as slave to back up data. Removed SATA HD and set the jumpers of the slave HD to Master and start again.

OK booting from CD and go through set up procedure, after a while I get the message: No HD found.

Anybody has an idea what I have to do?

Your help very much appreciated!

Kind regards,

Alex

And BTW, go for a Western Digital next time. Had nothing but bad experiences with Maxtor.

[Niloc]

I had this problem last week with a s/h machine I bought, I took it back and he fixed it, 'battery' was the single word explanation. Maybe the OS demands the on-board battery is OK before it will look for a drive to boot from?

[AlexLah]

Hi All

Had some advice from a family member that told me to knock the hardrive a few times with a hammer and guess what.

It worked!!!!

[Khun Jack]

Hi All

Had some advice from a family member that told me to knock the hardrive a few times with a hammer and guess what.

It worked!!!!

That is a usable trick for 'old' harddiscs, should not be needed for a new drive.

Had to much problems with Maxtor drives, I buy now Seagates with five years of warranty.

Buy all pc parts with a long warranty period that saves money in this climate.

[AlexLah]

Yep it was my old harddisk.

Just another question.

Can I have SATA and IDE HD combined in one pc with the IDE as master first?

What I want to do is first format the SATA while running from IDE drive then install Windows on SATA, and then change IDE to slave to function as back up drive and boot from SATA.

Thanks for your advice,

Alex

[Khun Jack]

Yep it was my old harddisk.

Just another question.

Can I have SATA and IDE HD combined in one pc with the IDE as master first?

What I want to do is first format the SATA while running from IDE drive then install Windows on SATA, and then change IDE to slave to function as back up drive and boot from SATA.

Thanks for your advice,

Alex

With modern mainboards in the bios setup you can choose wich device floppy,CD, and a choice for all detected HD drive's boots first.

For older mainboards without this feature above you can create a small primairy partion and install a bootmanager.

With a winXP install CD, boot from this CD and use the windows setup for partioning and format any drive.