external HD won't turn on

All of a sudden my external hardrive won't turn on. There's still a light on each end of the usb cord, but that's it. I have checked the obvious stuff like is the power on and is it plugged in.

I want to make sure the HD is still OK. Is there a post here somewhere on how to connect a second HD to your computer?

 

When you say

, do you mean it has no power or it is not being detected by the o/s.

Firstly, your external HDD has a seperate power brick? is there a light on the casing of the external HDD. If you put your hand on the casing can you feel the HDD spinning??

 

It has no power.

I checked the power brick and the cord is torn in one small section, which I think is the problem.rolleyes

I opened up my box and stuck it in there, connected a 4-pin connector which is similar to the one already connected to the master HD, and now I get this in the bios:

IDE channel 0 Master = HD 2 (the one I just added)
IDE channel 0 Slave = 0

IDE channel 1 Master = none
IDE channel 1 Slave = none

IDE Channel 2 Master = HD 1 (the main HD with OS)
IDE channel 3 Master = none


I didn't save this configuration from auto detect because I was afraid it wasn't right. I want the second HD to be the slave. What do I do?

P.S. the main HD is Western Digital ATA, and the second one is Seagate Barracuda ultraATA.

 

Actually, I should probably just be asking how to set up a second internal Ultra ATA HD with a SATA HD that has the OS on it.

 

I will try to fill the blanks from the bios info you have posted. Your mobo has 2 IDE/PATA controllers. The first 4 lines as per above. The external HDD which you have is PATA which you connected to IDE 1 Master by way of an IDE data cable (the cable is 2 inches wide). You also plugged a 4 pin molex power connector in the ext HDD.

You state that your internal HDD is SATA which appears to be the case as there is no master / slave relationship with SATA drives ie the last 2 lines of above.

If all of the above is correct then you originally connected the external PATA correctly to the motherboard.

Just make sure after you reconnect that you go into the bios and check that your sata drive is still the boot drive. When the system posts it will now list both drives. When xp loads it will say it has detected new hw and is installing driver. Let it do its stuff will take 20 secs, then reboot.

Upon reboot, the new drive / partitions on the drive will be allocated drive letters. If you only have 1 partition, then the o/s will allocate a drive letter following on from the last drive letter used for HDD.

For clarity I take it that the ext HDD was only a data drive and has no primary partition ie one that is bootable.

Good Luck

 

Thanks for the reply, risk_reversal. But I made a mistake. The first line where I wrote IDE Channel 0 Master is actually = DVD recorder, not the second HD

The second HD was not connected properly. I have to buy another suitable cable, UNLESS I can use the one that connects my DVD recorder to the motherboard, as it has a second attachment thingy, but it's closer to where the DVD recorder is in the box and won't reach the spot where I want to put the second HD in the case.
Would it be OK though if I could use this same cable that the DVD is attached to, or would it not work properly?

 

I take it your DVD recorder is an IDE mode ie ATA. There should be a middle ATA connector free connector on that data cable and you can connect the ext HDD to that. Just make sure that you jumper the DVD recorder to master and the PATA HDD to slave.

 

Yes that's what I was thinking of doing...thanks. But the middle ATA connector that's free is closer to the DVD than to where I want to put the ext HDD. There's a slot next to the DVD but it's too large for the HDD. Is it OK to put the HDD there anyway, even if it's only fastened to the box with one screw? Any suggestions?

 

So you want to place the HDD in the 5 1/4 inch enclosure adjacent to the optical drive ie dvd.

Securing the hdd with one screw or with screws on one side is probably not a good idea especially if the hdd is going to be hanging in space. However, this will work from a tech perspective.

What I would suggest is that you purchase an ATA cable for your PATA hdd.

It will be better that way since if the dvd and hdd are on the same ATA cable the hdd will only be slowed down by the optical drive. if you buy the ata data cable then connect the hdd alone on the primary ide controller and jumper as master. This means that the hdd will have to be connected to an end connector. Also make sure that you connect the right end to the mobo. They are colour coded blue, black & grey.

Connect the dvd on the 2nd ide controller in same way and also jumper as master.

Good Luck