Samsung ATA HDD

[goodison1234]

I recently bought a Samsung 80gig ATA HDD.  (I realised after buying an IDE that my PC doesnt accept them?)  Anyway, after following all instructions carefully both in my Dell manual and on the little leaflet which came with the HDD I had a few problems with my PC recognising the drive in the BIOS.  Eventually the BIOS now recognises the new (and old) HDD as being present. 

However, in XP's 'My Computer' the drive doesn't appear to be there and it looks as if it is present in the form of a CD drive?  In Device Manager, in the 'Disk Drives' the Samsung drive IS there. ("SAMSUNG SP0812C").

So, what's going on?

Suggestions from people I have asked (all of which are not familiar with ATA drives) suggest making one of them a slave/master.  From what I can see from my initial research is that this isn't necessary on ATA drives - it depends on the order in which they are connected to the motherboard.  Although I'm not sure on this, I tried putting the little plastic cap (jumper?) in the slave position on the new drive, and the other without any caps (making it the master?).  But the actual HDD's don't indicate at all (in any documentation I have seen) the use of jumpers on these ATA drives. Although it seems the section of pins where this is done is there? 

Can anyone shed any light on this problem?

I have tried to download a driver, and I have just got a Samsung diagnostic tool for HDD's - but when I run it, it can't find the HDD?

What is going on?  I have fiddled as much as I can to resolve this problem - e.g. switching drives in different possitions, connecting them to different ATA spaces on the motherboard (ATA0, ATA1, ATA2, ATA3).

ANY suggestions is very much appreciated. 

Thanks,

Alex.

[kempie]

SATA drives do not require such settings as Master/Slave because there is only one drive per cable, so technically they could be described as Master drives on their own channel.

As long as both drives are recognised in the BIOS you can 'sort out' XP by right-clicking My Computer and selecting Manage.
In the Computer Management (Local) tree select Storage >> Disk Management from which you can determine if XP recognises the drives correctly and if so you can re-assign drive letters etc.

[Ralph]

You may need to format the new drive for it to be useable. When you do as kempie says above, see if you new drive is listed as "unallocated" or something like that. You can then right-click it in Disk Management and select Format. That should do it hopefully.

[goodison1234]

Hello, thanks for your help - although there is a problem. I have prepared a screendump and put it here:

http://scissorkick.co.uk/hdd.JPG

As you can see the drive is recognised by the computer but 'not initialized'.  When I right-click there is no option to format (there is, however, on the working drive above it).

Do you know another method to format it, or is this now not the problem?

Alex.

[goodison1234]

Ok, I have now 'initialized' the drive...

Made absolutley no change what-so-ever as far as I can see?  I have just re-booted - still nothing to report.

[goodison1234]

Ignore the last two posts - I managed to format it and it's now a fully functional drive H!

Thanks for help

 

Alex.