eMachines T5026 hhd upgrade

:wave Hilly ho! Merry Christmas! Happy Holidays one and all.:-D

Well sir ... I'm tried of XP complaining about hhd space will the eMachines T5026 handle a 1tb hhd?:confused

 

If it's 32-bit XP Pro, it should support up to 2TB.

 

It is indeed ... thank you for posting.

 

:waveWell sir ... I installed a 1TB hhd to my emachine, but I had a 500G hard drive hook up too, and it doesn't see it.:cry It see it when I have the 160G hhd I'm replacing is hooked up, but nothing when I have the 1TB hook up. rolleyes What's wrong with this picture?:confused

 

How are you hooking up the drives? Is the 500GB drive set up as a slave drive and the 160GB as a master drive in the eMachine's case? You can only accommodate one of each so, the 1TB drive would need to go in in place of the 500GB drive. Is the 1TB drive initialized? To initialize the disk, see the instructions here.

 

:waveWell sir I got the 1TB as the master drive and the 500GB as the slave. The 160 was a sata and the master while the 500GB has to old IDE hook up in the emachine case. What do you mean initialize? What is that suppose to do? The 1TB a sata is working ok. I put the OS on it and it is the new master hard drive. Is that what is keeping the computer from seeing the 500GB it not being initialize?:confused

 

Now, I'm getting a little confused. You said it wasn't seeing the 1TB drive. If you're using both SATA and IDE drives in the same case, someone is going to have to jump in here and help. Sorry, but I can't. :-o

 

Thanks anyway:wave ... hopefully someone will be able to tell me what is going on.:cry

 

Well...let me modify my original message and repost below.

 

I'm fairly confused because of the mix-of-terms bandied about.

Is this Google-Images page an accurate depiction of your PC?

The 16th pix displays the motherboard with 'word balloon' descriptions to some components. I see two IDE ports on there. But no SATA connectors. So, I'm wondering if this is the correct model, or ??

Your 1Tb Drive is a SATA? And it functions properly (since you loaded the OS on it).

The 500Tb Drive is IDE? And can't be "seen"?

And this is the 2-drive setup you want to use, yes? The 160Gb is an IDE drive (probably the original boot drive?) and is sitting on your desk. (Ah, the joys of a $20 USB-to-IDE/SATA connector box for use as an external drive, later on!)

In the world of IDE cabling, I always recommend hard-coding HDDs into Master and Slave jumper settings, and specifically NOT recommending a reliance on the ubiquitous "Cable Select" option. That requires way too much cooperation and perfection, and while that often works, the ease of setting jumpers correctly (thank goodness for needle-nose pliers) provides the best certainty.

I am wondering if you pulled the 160Gb Master-jumpered IDE drive away from the same cable as your 500Gb Slave-jumpered drive? Your CD-DVD dri is probably on the 2nd IDE connector (this is the superior arrangement because IDE-HDDs must slow down to the accommodate the slower-trafficked optical drives if they use the same IDE cable - NOT an optimal solution).

When you typed that the computer didn't "see" a drive, there are two locations to "see" a drive - the BIOS setup and then Windows Disk Management tool...

...which is found under the Control Panel's ADMINISTRATIVE TOOLS...
...Computer Management...
...Disk Management.

Can you tell me which of these isn't "seeing" the drive - BIOS Setup isn't seeing it? Or Disk Management isn't?

IF indeed the Google-Images Pix are correct and your motherboard only has IDE connectors, then I assume you've added a SATA controller card? This will of course change a lot.

 

:waveOkay ... let me clarify ... the 160GB is a sata drive ... it use to be the master drive. The 500GB drive is and IDE and it was the slave. I installed the 1TB sata drive that now has the OS. It is working fine. I'm trying to get the computer to see the 500GB drive as the slave drive again but it won't. The one poster stated this machine could handle 2TB. But I'm thinking it can't.cry

Now the google pictures is the emachine. The mobo does have a sata port for the hard drive, so I didn't have to use any adapters.

When I checked the BIOS the 500GB IDE drive was not listed when I have the 1 TB installed.

160GB SATA use to be master drive
500GB IDE was the slave drive
1TB SATA is the new OS drive

When I hook up the 160GB sata drive with the 500GB ide drive ... the emachine can see both. But when I hook up the 1TB sata with the 500GB ide ... the emachine does not see it.

Both the BIOS and the disk management does not see the 500GB IDE drive.

Hope this clears things up.:-o

 

Now I'm getting a clearer picture. Master/slave is an IDE feature only. There is no master/slave in SATA. If you still have the jumper on the 500GB drive set for slave, remove it and leave the drive "raw". Hopefully, that will clear the issue.

 

I was going to suggest "set the 500Gb IDE drive to MASTER via the jumper, and then make sure it's using the last connector on the IDE cable."

The MASTER SLAVE nomenclature can be confusing because, during the boot-up screen, you may see a listing of the drives that use "Master" and "Slave" designators. Even SATA drives can be displayed using these - but this only in the POST or Bootup Drive Listings. Only true IDE Drives make use of these settings.

WORRIES ABOUT 1tb or 2tb? Nope. None.

There was a motherboard chipset that once used a 640Gb limit but it was quickly squashed with a BIOS update. Since your 1Tb drive is recognized - since you've used it - you have also answered the next question, "Could this be a 2Tb drive?" Yes. "If it takes 1Tb, it will take 2Tb."

There is a Greater-Than-2Tb limit, by the way, and overcoming it can be a hardware issue, or it can be a software-only issue. But that's for another time.

ANY OTHER POSSIBLE REASONS FOR FAILURE? What's your optical drive using for a connector? Is it using a different IDE connector? (It should be, and I'd set both the Optical Drive and the 500Gb as Master Drives for their individual cables.)

 

:wave I have two dvd drives both IDE using a different connector.

Okay so you are saying I should set the 500GB as the master, making sure I use the primary cable for it ... and that will allow the emachine to see it?:confused

 

Yes, I would make a change. (Well, since "as is" doesn't work, some change MUST occur, yes?)

So, set the 500Gb to it's Master Jumper Setting, and then use it's IDE cable's last connector - that's the terminator or Master connector.

Our primary goal is to get BIOS Setup to detect and display the 500Gb drive. Windows isn't important at this point (if BIOS Setup doesn't show it, Windows should not. Conversely, once BIOS Setup sees it, Windows should.) To this end, I generally just let the PC get into BIOS Setup, and use the AUTO DETECT function to refresh the BIOS Setup table.

If I can't find an Auto Detect, then I try to synthesize some BIOS change - change any ENABLE to DISABLE, then back again - 'synthesizing' a change. Then, I do a SAVE AND EXIT, let the machine reboot and go back into BIOS Setup again to double check my work.

After that double-check is successful, then I SAVE & EXIT BIOS once more and let it go into Windows.

If I continue to get FAILS TO DETECT in BIOS Setup, then I EXIT NO SAVE (although it doesn't matter), and do a shutdown on the PC, and re-do my settings.

If I have trouble figuring out the HDD's Jumper Settings, these are usually pretty standard by the time 500Gb drives arrived on the market. (The Jumper Settings will be Master=1, Slave=2, CableSelect=3 usually. "1" by the way is the 'inner most' jumper. And jumpers are the vertical pair.)

 

One more thing to pay attention to - in BIOS SETUP, you should have a BOOT ORDER for the hard-drives, and you'll want to double-check to have the SATA 1Tb as your boot drive.

The current settings might be 1stBoot=Optical Drive, 2nd=Floppy, 3rd=SATA. Since the first two devices are normally empty at boot-time, your 1Tb SATA should be the normal start-up drive.

 

Set the 500GB to master ... so far nothing ... I didn't see any auto detect in the BIOS and so far I can't get it to make the hhd the first boot ... I highlight it to change it, but I see no way to do it. I know about changing the boot sequence but so far I see no way to do it. I keep working to figure out a way.

 

:waveActually the bios is not allow me to change the booting sequence ... all three of the drives the hhd and the dvd's are listed together in white. I can't get the up down keys to go into that area. Could it be the new hhd?:confused

 

SP, solving those BIOS naming conventions can put you into Sherlock worthy status.

IF you elect, you can always try the 500Gb at SLAVE jumper setting, and then use the 'inner' IDE cable connector to support that change. OR, the next thing to try is set the Drive to CABLE SELECT (probably jumper position #3) and then re-attach the IDE cable to any connector to see if you get a change-in-behavior.

Despite eMachines' earned reputation for using bottom-of-barrel parts, the age of this motherboard and its BIOS should have AutoDetect capabilities without any additional user-action.

Sometimes the Auto-Detect can be manually forced by moving my cursor to the IDE Connection displayed in BIOS, and then tapping ENTER.

Here's a Google-Images search for "IDE master-slave jumpers". You'll notice there are a variety of settings for SLAVE and CABLE-SELECT - in the early years of IDE drives, manufacturers had proprietary settings but in the last 5 or 7 years of IDE's heyday, they standardized. Fortunately, most drive makers also printed the jumper-settings on the drive label. Which is handy. IF you feel like pulling the drive just to verify.

 

SP, this just HAS to be a Settings Issue. Gotta be. Just gotta be. That's what I keep telling myself.

But...

What if there's something else?

I'll put this REPLY as a Shout-Out to anyone else. "Has anyone ever heard of an Intel 915 motherboard chipset that had an OVERALL capacity limit on hard-drives? Like, 1Tb TOTAL for all attached drives?"

I never have. But if this isn't a settings issue, or a cabling issue, then some other mysterious limit might be a possibility. Do you have chickens you can sacrifice in plain brown bags to swing 'round and 'round, out on your front lawn as you do voodoo dances?

Any nearby volcanoes to heave sacrifices into?