Okay my system is basically a FTP server. I need more space so I went out and bought a 250Gig drive. Yes I check to make sure my BIOs supports it. My system is configured the following.



(PREVIOUS CONFIGURATION)

PRIMARY IDE-->(MASTER)30GIG DRIVE ( WHICH HAS THE OS ( SLACKWARE 9.X ( FORGOT VERSION) ) )

PRIMARY IDE --> (SLAVE)30GIG DRIVE (USED AS STORAGE)





SECONDARY IDE -->(MASTER)CD-ROM

SECONDARY IDE -->(SLAVE)80GIG (USED FOR STORAGE)

I wanted the replace my CD-ROM(SECONDARY IDE MASTER) with my 250GIG drive. However, after doing so and I checked the jumpers after doing this the system would not boot. It wouldn't even get to LILO. It seems more of a BIOS issue then anything else, but wierd is that I took out my 30 GIG (PRIMARY IDE SLAVE) and it worked. I managed to FDISK the 250 GIG and partition it and mount it and made the entry under FSTAB the system came up like normal and it worked. It saw the drive and I can use and move files in out of my system. However, when I take that CDROM out it still doesn't boot up. Can someone please explain what problem I'm encountering?

(CURRECT CONFIGURATION)

PRIMARY IDE --> (MASTER) 30GIG (WITH THE OS ON IT)

PRIMARY IDE --> (SLAVE) 250GIG (USED FOR STORAGE)

SECONDARY IDE --> (MASTER) CDROM

SECONDARY IDE --> (SLAVE) 80 GIG (USED FOR STORAGE)

Have you double checked the jumper settings on the drives? Also, I would put the big drive on it's own ide channel so that it will run faster.

Plan9,

I have double checked, triple checked. The only thing I didn't do was switch the drives between master and slave and see if that has any effect. Maybe that is the next thing I should try. Still is there anything else that people can see that might be causing this problem or any suggestions?

Thanks

not sure if this will work, but in the old days (486's) i recall that the master had to be on the last connector on the ribbon, the slave on the next. If you are sure that the jumpers are correct, and have set the bios up correctly, i might try this.

it does seem like it has to be a setup issue as the drive has been installed and does work.

plan9,

for the jumppers I'm positive, but as for the BIOS I'm not. I do have the latest BIOS I know that because I had to d/l it so as to support the drive. However, it could have defaulted something. Could you give me a brief list of what thinks to look for in the BIOS? just to make sure...?

Look at 'integrated peripherial' or alike and try to change master and slave settings for your ide controlers

if the drive works so long as the cdrom is not installed, i doubt it's in the bios. if it was in the bios, then why is it working?

have you tried the making sure that the primary drive is on the last connector of each ribbon, and that the slave is on the middle connector?

do you have extra ribbon cables that you can swap out? it could be as simple as a cable problem.

plan9

onyxbird:

so what gives?

Might be a BIOS problem. Depending on the board ur using (FIC is a bad idea). I know I ran into a brick wall with an FIC mobo with making a cdrom drive work and I know this is the opposite but you might wanna check over the entire bios and make sure there isn't some obscure setting that requires you to have a cd/dvdrom device in. Well let us know what worked and what didn't!

Plan,

You could always start from scratch, Remove all the hard drives and cd rom from there, and just Attach the 250 gig one setting the jumper to Master or Single drive; And see if that works

Then start moving from there onwards.

I had a similar problem once with a broken cable:
the first drive worked as well as the cdrom, but when I replaced the cdrom with a harddisk system completly hang and harddisk wasn`t always detected by bios and so.

Or check how bios detects the drive:
as large or lba.
Because when your bios recognizes the drive as large you wont be able to boot ( I had this problem with drives > 120GB )
If thats the case just change it manually to lba and it should work.

Good luck!

Everyone,

Thanks for the suggestions I will be able to do it all on Friday morning. For now I'm out of down and away from the box. I got called away on Wenesday ( can't spell) ... I will be able to get it all done by Friday morning, and post up the results by 1pm PST.

Thanks for the suggestions everyone really appreciate it.

Gents,

I just fixed the problem. It was a BIOS issue. What happened is since I had a CDROM as a boot device it would not boot without one! Once I removed the device fromt he boot list it booted without the CDROM. So thank you Cedrick, and plan9 and everyone else for your help. It is very great having such a BB now I don't have nag my local linux expert friend.

Thank you once again.