harddrive cannot be found

[plug-in-muse]

hi im having some problems with a harddrive.

I've got this seagate 10gb harddrive for somewhere, and as far as i no its blank. So basically i just want to format it and set up a partition and install windows xp.

however when i turn on the computer, if i have the harddrive in as a master, im not able to get to the bios or anything. it just goes to the screen with the system info and trys to find previous boot records.

so i plugged in another hard drive which does work as the master, and this one as a slave. turn it on, it comes up fine and says its there. and as the other hard drive works im able to get the the fdisk and format tools. yet i type in format d: and it says 'invalid drive specification'. i dont understand as the drive is plugged in, and if first say that it was there, but now it cant find it.

also when i go onto my computer the drive doesnt appear either. so if the drive doesn't appear, how am i ment to access it to format it?

any suggestions? also ive done the obvious things such as checkin the jumpers and that its in the correct IDE slots etc.

 

[ksb007]

Maybe the controller on the hard drive went out or maybe the hard drive is just dead? Can you hear it spin up when you turn on the machine and it is plugged in as master?

 

[plug-in-muse]

yeah its definitely working inside, you can hear it and feel it viabrating. its not plugged in as a master at the moment no, its as a slave as this was the only way to get the bios up via using a harddrive that is fine with an OS on.