I was running windows 95 on a 8.0GB hard drive on this machine when I decided to put in a second drive. The idea was to set up HD0 1.07GB as primary master windows NT 4.0 server and HD1 8.0GB as primary slave for data. HD0 - Seagate ST31082A Size 1080MB Cyl 2097 Head 16 Sect 63 Master ::[:] Slave ::: CS :[:]: Cable Select M&NAS :[:][:] Master with non ata slave HD1 Seagate ST38410A Size 8455MB Cyl 16383 Heads 16 Sect 63 LBA = 16514064 Master [:]::: Slave :::: CS :[:]:: CS&NS [:][:]:: Now I know I have the right cables. The cables have a hole filled in. IDE1 is the secondary channel and IDE2 is the primary channel. So Primary channel sys-board - Slave - Master IDE2 - 8.0GB - 1.07GB Pin Settings 8.0GB = :[:]:: - Cable select 1.07GB = ::[:] = Primary master I ran the bios setup utility American Megatrends Amibios 1996 In the basic bios setup I alter the list of hard drives as follows Type Size Cyl Head Sect Pri Master Auto Pri Slave User 8063 16383 16 63 LBA BLK P10 32-Bit mode mode mode mode Pri Master on on Auto on Pri Slave on on Auto on Type LBA BLK P10 32-Bit mode mode mode mode Sec Master CD-ROM off off Auto on Sec Slave <Not Installed> When the computer boots you see the bios messages American Megatrends - Amibios 1996 A197S 080597 The floppy drive is detected and then the hard drives... Pri Master 1.07 MATs---A CR-583 There is then a very long pause, with a message wait.... After about five minutes there is an error message Pri-Slave HDD setup error Press F1 to resume After pressing F1, the boot box seems to say that the primary master is the CD-ROM. The computer then boots from the floppy disk to the command prompt. On typing FDISK we get message "No fixed disks present" if I run the setup utility and ask it autodetect the hard drives (in the bios mode), then I get this PM CDROM PS <Not installed> SM <Not installed> SS <Not installed> But if I set everything to auto detect and reboot then it says Primary master <Not detected> Primary Slave <Not detected> Secondary Master 1.07 MATs---A CR-583 Secondary Slave <Not detected> If I disconnect the big drive then it boots OK. I'm almost 100% sure I copied the details off the drive correctly, so I can't see what the problem is. Can any one help me out? Thanks a lot

Normally IDE1 would be primary & IDE2 secondary - try setting them both to master, rather than CS & put smaller on primary, larger on secondary.

Thanks JohnR i will do this later when i get back from work. What i don't understand is why i have to do this? Why doesn't the configuration work. They are both the same manufacturer of hard disk, the pins are set correctly. Indeed i have swapped these cables round on the motherboard before and then the autodetect simply find the primary master as cdrom and the secondary master as the 1.07GB hard drive, but i cannot seem to get past the fact there is a slave hdd setup error. But it was all working fine before. i have not tried putting the hard drives on different cables and i will try, but i do not understand why i should have to do this.? Thanks JohnR, its all very frustrating, i will try what you suggest.

Just leave all the drive settings at AUTO in cmos. If you're using an 80-wire cable make sure the drives are connected at the proper place on the cables. Use master/slave settings on all the items and not cable select. Visually verify the hard drives are connected to the primary IDE controller on the motherboard and the cdrom to the secondary.

Stranger than fiction... As i had said before, the computer could see the drives seperately, but not together. But in one final attempt, i attached the big drive as the master and the small drive as the slave, and it all worked!! Its not how i wanted it, because i wanted to put the o/s on the small drive, but because i am using NT i can use a bit of jiggery-pokery to make it work. i still have no idea why this should be. Anyway, problem kind of solved, thanks everyone!