I have a Quantum drive which is set to master and worked fine in my Dell. Yesterday, I took the drive out and put it in another pc. When the drive is autodetected in the cmos it looks like this Primary 1: Not detected 2: User Cyl HD WP Lz Sec (and list correct HD settings) So I save and reboot and it tells me to insert a boot disk. So I guess the HD settings need to be under Primary 1: The strange thing is, I leave the pc on for about 5 minutes, reboot, and it boots from the hard disk into Windows 98 (Strange) I reboot, go into cmos and it shows the primary drive and everything is set up correctly. I leave the pc off all night, turn it on this morning and it does the same thing Primary drive is not found but puts it under secondary, leave it on a few minutes, reboot, go to cmos & drive is primary again and everything functions as normal. It's like the pc has to warm up or something. Anyway, I don't like it and would like to know how to fix it. Thanks Also ribbon cable is inserted on the motherboard in the primary slot/not secondary.

Is the hard drive connected at the far end of the IDE cable? try using the IDE cable from your Dell PC, and see what happens. are u sure the jumper is on "Master"? normally, hard drives used on branded PCs are set to "Cable Select"..

You need to tell bios of the drive size and number of cylinders ect, go into bios and where the new drive is listed by manufacturers number , highlight press enter key on keyboard and select auto. This will make bios auto detect your drives details. Save and exit bios.

Hi, Yes, try another cable. Then try with just that HD and no CD. In my experience, most HDs and MoBo for many years do NOT need 'cable select', but if it's still slow to 'wake up' you can try cable select. If this does not help, with any other IDE drives disconnected, you may have a power supply problem. Go into CMOS and see if there's a voltage monitor. Check it when it's been off all night. If no voltage monitor in CMOS, you can buy a passable voltmeter cheap. The drive power cable has 12V on yellow to black and 5V on red to black. Let us know. M2

DON'T use Cable Select...EVER!

well.. what about cd-rom,cd-writer & floppy, did they light on when you press power button??? and did your hd light on? keyboard and fans too, (need more details) ... but i don't get it why you transfer it to the other pc. anyway, i have never seem before, good luck.

I transferred the drive to my another pc because the drive was bigger. And yes the floppy drive light & everything comes on when I hit the power button. The drive is at the far end of the cable when I checked. I am fixing to try some of your suggestions and get back to you all. Thanks for your help. I will try the cable from the Dell pc.