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    Help installing second hard drive.

    Discussion in 'Hardware Components and Aftermarket Upgrades' started by Jgore, Jun 16, 2006.

  1. Jgore

    Jgore Newbie

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    i recently bought a laptop,i believe its of the same chassis or whatever as the alienware 17" or any of those ,it has amd Athlon x2 4200+,nvidia geforce go 7800gtx,1gb ram,and a 80 gb 5400 harddrive,i got a second one to add to it and have the necessary drivers but when i plug them both in when the computer starts up it seems to freeze,both harddrives work perfectly i have installed windows on both and both work and both work from either slot. i believe theres a problem in bios some where ,but nothing ive tried has worked.
    Any ideas would be great i want to get raid working but first i need to get both harddrives working,thanks.
     
    Jgore, Jun 16, 2006
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  2. guitarist

    guitarist Newbie

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    So you found a spot to fit the 2'nd HD in? Wow. Raid may be a lot of trouble vs gains. It wears on HDs as well alot more, I'm told. There should be more deciphered BOISes around like the old NF2 from ASUS. We need such for the Dell notebooks too. Is the drive "prepared for install? Maybe do that on a destop system prior to the the implant. Maxtor and others have good software for that.
     
    guitarist, Jun 17, 2006
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  3. Heavenz

    Heavenz Notebook Enthusiast

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    Im not too sure about notebooks, but for desktop HDD, u have to change some jumper settings at the back of the HDD (master & slave settings). If they are on the same IDE channel, they cant both be set as master. As a result, the pc doesnt boot or 1 drive goes undetected. Might be the same for notebook hard drives, try checking what your drive is set to.
     
    Heavenz, Jun 17, 2006
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  4. Iter

    Iter Notebook Evangelist

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    You can check that the BIOS can detect the both HD, one is Master, one is slave. If they can recongize them, to install the Windows should be no any problem. i recommend that only install one HD as a master to install a Windows first. After the installation, then put the 2nd one so that you would not be confused which HD should be used for Windows. After all the installation of Windows and 2nd HD, let Windows initialize it and create the partition and format it. This is a normal way to use the 2nd HD. If your BIOS cannot detect the 2nd HD, probably, your laptop and the 2nd HD cannot be compartible
     
    Iter, Jun 17, 2006
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  5. Jgore

    Jgore Newbie

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    i dont think the harddrives have any switch to change between master and slave,the second hd is identical to the first,bios does not seem to recognise the second one.my computer came with software to boot from for this purpose but it doesnt work ,i seem to be overlooking something.
     
    Jgore, Jun 23, 2006
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