Adding a 2nd hard drive should be as easy as popping it into the box, firing it up, and using fdisk to get it to where you need it. Unfortunately, I'm not having such luck.

I have a 200GB Western Digital hard drive that was in an old window$ XP computer that bit the dust. On this drive I have all of my MP3's and videos (luckily I was able to back them up). I wanted to toss this into my Debian Etch machine and use it as a file server. I was actually going to wipe this drive clean and start from scratch with the ext3 file system on it.

The problem is that whenever I plug this hard drive into any box that doesn't have window$ installed, the bios sees it as an 8GB drive. I have not seen how to fix this in Linux and could not find any drivers from Western Digital to solve this issue like it did for window$.

At 1st attempt @ putting this 200GB drive into my Debian machine, I set it up as master on the 2nd IDE cable and had the CD-ROM set to slave. (I read somewhere that it is better to have the drive as master on another IDE cable then slave on main. There are also physical limitations that prevent this.) The bios didn't see either the hard drive or the cd-rom.

2nd attempt, I made CD-ROM the master and the hard drive the slave. Now when I use "fdisk -l" I get this...

does anyone have any ideas?

Are you changing the jumpers on the drives to select master/slave/cable select?

yes

I had HD set to master on 1st go and CD-ROM set to slave. Then I switched it to have HD set to slave and CD-ROM set to master.

Some of the cables are cable select and will not work correctly with the master/slave jumper.

I'm not sure if I will help you, but first, I would read the user's manual for your hard drive, which can be found at: http://support.wdc.com/download/
in order to figure out how the jumper should be set.

Important: *before* connecting, or disconnecting any drives to an IDE channel on the motherboard, turn your computer off, or you might make a pretty big mess.

Then, I'd make sure that the "IDE channels", or similar option in BIOS is set to "BOTH", which means that both IDE channels are enabled on your motherboard, and you can connect hard or optical drives on both the Primary, and the Secondary channel.

Not sure if you know this, but as a piece of advice:
If possible, keep the hard drives (which are usually faster than the optical drives) connected to the primary IDE channel, and the optical drives (usually slower than the hard drives) connected to the Secondary IDE channel (channels should be marked on your motherboard's surface, or distinguished in the motherboard's user's manual).

If you connect two hard drives on one channel, the one that you want to boot the operating system from, should be set up as Master, and the other one as Slave using the tiny jumper on each one of them.

If you connect two read-only capable optical drives (either a DVD-ROM plus a CD-ROM, two DVD-ROM drives, or two CD-ROM drives) on the secondary IDE channel, I don't think it matters which one is Master and which is slave (I might be wrong here though).

However, It does matter if one of them is a burner (DVD-Writer or a CD-Writer). In this case, the burner should be set as a Master, and the CD-ROM or DVD-ROM as a Slave.

If you're unsure of how to set up the jumpers, or how to connect the drives, you can always read the user's manual for the drive that you're trying to connect (which you can probably download from the manufacturer's website). The user's manual for your motherboard might be helpful too. You can also ask others whenever you are not sure of something.

I have the jumpers set to the proper positions. I didn't realize about the burner needing to be master. That answers the question why both drives were not seen when the HD was master and the CD-ROM was slave. Physical limitations in the rig prevent me from putting the HD as slave on the primary IDE cable.

I'm sure the bios isn't the problem as far as seeing the hardware. It recognizes that the HD and CD-ROM is there, but it only sees the 200GB drive as 8GB. That is a bios problem.

I don't think there are such implications; with a HDD plus a DVD- or CD-ROM on the same channel, as long as one of them is Master and the other one is Slave, you're fine (keeping in mind that if you want to boot the OS from the HDD, you set it as Master). The problem could occur, if you connect a hard drive (especially one that you boot your OS from), and a CD- or a DVD-Writer on one channel, since the HDD with a running OS on it requires a fast access to CPU / RAM etc., and the CD- or DVD-Writer requires those too (the CD or DVD writing process needs a constant, and fast data flow).
I'm not an expert in this, I just know my fair share (from personal experience), but you might find this information useful:
http://web.inter.nl.net/hcc/J.Steunebrink/bioslim.htm

These two websites talk about more recent hard disk drives' limitations (a pretty nice overview):
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/mosaddi...%20Drives.html
http://tldp.org/HOWTO/Large-Disk-HOWTO-4.html

I think the best keywords you should look for (for example in google.com) are:
disk drive capacity limit

just make sure you enter all of them in the "search" field. You could also try things like:
drive capacity barrier

or:
hard disk size barriers

I hope it helps at least a little

It might be something as obvious as a faulty IDE cable (try other ones).
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If it turns out that you need a BIOS update, first read the newer (than your current version) BIOS versions' documentation on the mainboard manufacturer's website, to make sure that at least one of them allows the BIOS to "see" bigger hard disk drives. Otherwise it would make little sense to upgrade/flash the BIOS.

There are also third party BIOSes, but I wouldn't trust them (although sometimes they help - be extra careful).

If not, you might read about other options such as additional hard disk drive controllers that can be bought as, for example, PCI cards ("PCI IDE controller"?), and maybe this would help you.

Additionally, there are always hardware-specialized computer forums out there (one of my rules is: "the more important your problem is, the more people you should ask for an advice / solution (possibly people from completely different communities)").

Thank you for the links. Tried another IDE cable and still getting the same stuff.

I think it may be time for a new linux computer. I'm sure the one I am using is way past it's prime but has served it's purpose of helping me learn some stuff about linux!

Oh well... I guess it was not ment for me to get this drive working in this rig ; ;