Hard drive not recognized in BIOS

Help, I've been two days on this and am not getting anywhere.

Trying to upgrade the hard drive in a couple of semi-rugged laptops, but neither HDD is recognized by either laptop. Hard drives are both working pulls Toshiba MK1031GAS 100GB. Laptops are CF-51RC4EFBM and CF-50HB2FUKM. No jumpers on HDD pins = master according to Toshiba website. Tried HDD in Dell D610 and they run like a champ. Formated DOS & NFTS in Dell, but neither worked in the Panasonics.

Any ides what I need to do for these drives to be seen by the Panasonics?

Thanks in advance,
Joe

 

I had a similar problem with a smaller Toshiba drive. I tried jumping it to master with no luck. I had to trace which pin the jumper actually grounded out. I don't recall right now, but it was somewhere in the middle. I then soldered that pin with one of the ground pins. Apparently the normal jumper pins were not connected to anything.
It may be pin 28 to pin 26 or pin 30. 26 and 30 are both grounds.

 

I just verified that it is pin 28 that needs to be grounded to force the drive to master. Pins 26 and 30 are both grounds.

My conclusion is that these drives are made specifically to a manufacturers specs. They are cable select only and need to be forced to master as Panasonic only recognize drives set as master.

 

Thanks for the quick reply. I had seen your thread during my research (congrats on the analysis), but then there is the question about how the Panasonic cable end would fit over the pins if two of the pins were connected. Wouldn't that connection prevent the cable end from sliding down all the way on all the other pins?

 

I had to use a very small wire to bridge the pins at the bottom. Telephone wire??? The connector does not bottom out anymore, but it seats far enough to work. It rests up maybe 1/32

 

Okay, I guess you made that work. Nice job!

Is that really the only way though? You were working with a 30GB Toshiba drive, these are 100GB. Are we saying that none of the Toshiba IDE drives works in Panasonics? That is hard to believe, and if so, it is even harder to believe that there have not been dozens (maybe hundreds) of people discussing this matter long before now. I feel like we are missing something, that others have found a way to make this work, or they would be posting a problem like we did.

 

I suspect that there is something wrong with your harddrive cable ribbon. If somebody who pulled out the OEM harddrive on it and its not carefull enough. It has tendency to break or crack two to three lines on it. Or check if it there is some rub in front of it that has coz some line to ground or short each other. The other posibilities is that you hook up the Hdd in a wrong way.


ohlip

 

Yeah ohlip, I thought the same thing and tried a second caddy for the CF-51, no luck. So, I really doubt 3 cables (2 CF-51 and 1 CF-50) are all bad.

BTW, I have several CF-51 caddies that I plan on selling, but this forum requires 12 posts before I can list here, so it will probably be on fleabay.

 

Drop your email in the contact page (info) at bluerockranchca dot com please. You selling the ones that don't work? Just teasing but I do need a caddy.

 

I tried that drive of mine in several machines and caddies as well. It indeed was the drive. Not all Toshiba drives. My theory is the let's say Dull ordered 10,000 drives. For whatever reason they had Toshiba make those drives as cable select only. Maybe to make them idiot proof. I don't know. Since most laptops are cable select, unless someone pulls one of those drives and tries it in the oddball laptop that requires master, you will never know of the oddball configuration.

 

Just to put an end to this thread, the fix suggested by deere245 does work. The only drawback is the fit of the connector. I made the fit a little better by removing some of the plastic around the 26&28 pins, but with all the custom work, I would instead suggest selling the Toshiba hard drive and going with another brand. Thanks for everyones input.

 

That deere dude does it again, he's a credit to himself, a credit to his family and a credit to a forum of "Mustard Cutters".

Put this in your Signature dude,

deere dude "I cut the Mustard"

 

Good thing I like mustard. Sig changed.. LOL

 

more to say of having the faith of a mustard seed and moving mountains. I can't help but agree............Driller