Hard drive boots in Master/Slave mode, but not by itself

irrumator11

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I have two hard drives installed in my computer - a 120GB one and a 250GB one. Both have Windows installed on them. When I set the 250GB to Master, and the 120GB to Slave, the computer boots normally, and everything works. Now, I don't really need the 120GB drive, so I want to unplug it and just keep it inside the computer. I unplug the power plug form it, and the ribbon cable, leaving the jumpers in the same place on both drives. Then I try booting up the computer, and it says "No operating system found!" When I go into BIOS setup, with only the 250GB drive plugged in, it doesn't detect any hard drives at all. What am I doing wrong? Thanks for all your help.
 
the 250 drive, whether set to master or to cable select and plugged into the end of the ribbon cable, just doesn't show up if it's the only drive that's connected. it shows up as master when the 120 is set to slave, it shows up as slave when the 120 is set to master, but it just doesn't show up when the 120 is not connected.
hmm, this does make it seem like i'm doing something wrong with the jumper settings, but i swear i've tried every possible combination of ribbon cable plugs and jumper settings, and still - nada.
 
It may be a defective drive. Are you running xp? If yes, try booting to windows normally (the way it works) and go to Start-Control Panel-Click Administrative Tools-Computer Managment-Click disk Managment. Then see if the 250gb shows up.
 
is it possible 1 of the hardrives has your boot menu on and the other does not
 
It may be a defective drive. Are you running xp? If yes, try booting to windows normally (the way it works) and go to Start-Control Panel-Click Administrative Tools-Computer Managment-Click disk Managment. Then see if the 250gb shows up.

The 250GB drive shows up in Disk Management, both when it's set to master, and to slave.

is it possible 1 of the hardrives has your boot menu on and the other does not

Maybe? I have tried to wipe-and-reinstall Windows on the 250GB drive a little while ago, and the problem is that when it's the only drive plugged in, it seems to be invisible to the system. Can't see it in BIOS!
 
ahh cant see it in the bios either ???

thats really strange, there maybe a problem with the jumpers when its trying to act as master it shorts something that makes it unreadable by the data cable ?

how bout if you back it all up and use a windows disk to format the drive in full format NTFS so it does it all good and then c wot happens.
 
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