Hardware Is it possible to use an External Hard Drive as a Hard disk drive?

[ky]

(In a sarcastic tone)Haha real funny guys.

 

[orb]

When the boot screen came up it said that there is a disk drive running out of its parameters.

Are drive parameters detected on computer startup, or were they set by user? Did you try to enter the BIOS setup and re-detect disks?

 

[garyw]

I'm trying to understand something, Did you plug the hard drive into the floppy disk cable or something?

 

[orb]

I'm trying to understand something, Did you plug the hard drive into the floppy disk cable or something?

I think it's rather located in an empty 3.5" floppy drive slot, but connected with matching (40 or 80-wire) cable. :shrug:

 

[garyw]

I would hope so! If so, it's possible that ky has removed the floppy drive and the PC is complaining about that - i.e. seeking a drive that doesn't exist. This would explain the parameters error.

I think.

It would help to have the actual error message.

 

[ky]

I think it's rather located in an empty 3.5" floppy drive slot, but connected with matching (40 or 80-wire) cable. :shrug:

This is what I meant.

---------- Post added at 10:27 PM ---------- Previous post was at 07:47 PM ----------

This is what it said on start with using the two disks:

Diskette Drive 0 seek failure

WARNINGell's Disk Monitoring System has detected that Drive 0 on the Secondary EIDE controller is operating outside normal specifications.It is adviseable to immediatly backup your data and replace your hard dis drive by calling your support desk or Dell Computer Corporation

 

[garyw]

How old is the second hard drive? Has it been used before?

This might be dell being over cautious or it could represent a potential real problem of that second hard drive.

 

[ky]

It is a few years old about 5 or 6 probably older because i got it from my digital video teacher at my school.Yes it has been used.

---------- Post added 06-10-11 at 01:39 AM ---------- Previous post was 06-09-11 at 11:55 PM ----------

This is my hard drive

Maxtor MaXLine Plus II 250GB ATA

"Extra-large" Maxtor drives offer 200GB and 250GB of storage
Designed to augment or replace tape and optical storage solutions
Proven in network attached storage solutions
Ideal for media and rich-content storage
Rated to exceed 1 million hours MTTF in low I/O near-line and other secondary storage applications
Ideal for media and rich-content storage
<9.3 ms average seek time
7200 RPM
Ultra ATA/133 or SATA
S.M.A.R.T. compliant
8MB cache buffer

 

[Keatah]

Gosh I hate proprietary hardware with proprietary bios'es! My first assumption is that the bios is mis-reading the S.M.A.R.T. data from the drive, or more likely mis-interpreting it!

Be aware that with many dell systems, the bios is in "close communication" with the HPA on the hard disk. And sometimes, mirroring a smaller original dell drive to a newer bigger user-purchased-from-big-box type of drive will sometimes shrink the newer drive down to the size of the original dell-supplied drive. I've seen it happen.

What I would do is try running Crystal Disk Info to read the S.M.A.R.T. data yourself - and look for anything out of spec or a caution flag.

I can tell you this, with confidence, that no bios, no matter who wrote it, can reliably test and verify all types of drive, past, present, and future. It might read the SMART data and *THEN* it must interpret it. Different parameters are different for different drives! And I'm sure dell's bios works great with the drives DELL sells at the TIME when your system was built. No doubt.

I hope I didn't confuse the issue here.


ahh-hah!!

http://en.community.dell.com/support-forums/disk-drives/f/3534/t/2050275.aspx
http://www.google.com/#hl=en&sugexp...gc.r_pw.&fp=fe1af96bcfa414f7&biw=1024&bih=606

 

[agentgonzo]

Possibly master/slave conflict on the IDE channel?

 

[ky]

Funny that the hard drives not being detected by crystal disk info.

---------- Post added at 01:32 PM ---------- Previous post was at 01:27 PM ----------

Heres a link to the user manual: http://www.seagate.com/staticfiles/maxtor/en_us/documentation/manuals/maxline_plus_ii_manual.pdf .Looking through it right now.

 

[selden]

ky,

IDE supports two drives on a single data cable. One is the "master" and the second is the "slave". Usually the system's hard drive is the master and the CD drive is the slave.

Since it is temporarily replacing the CD-ROM, the new drive has to be temporarily configured as a slave drive. To configure it as a slave, the CS jumper must be removed on the drive. See section 3.3.1.1 in the installation manual that you linked to.

After the original drive has been cloned to the new drive, and the new system partition has been extended to occupy most of the new drive, disconnect the cables from the original drive and plug the new drive's CS jumper back in. This changes the drive from being a slave to being a master. You should then be able to boot from the new disk. After you've verified that it works, you can remove the original drive, put the new drive in its place, and restore the CD-ROM.

Does this help?

 

[Keatah]

Does the BIOS see the drive?

Now-
If the original hard disk is on one connector on the motherboard, and the CD rom is on another connector on the motherboard.

That makes two cables.

So the hard disk connecting in place of the cd-rom must be configured as a single drive. Not a master or slave. But a single drive. Because we are on a separate channel/controller.

Each channel in a standard pc can support 2 ide devices.

I don't know about dell, but the picture shows channel-1 hard disk
and channel-2 cd rom.

And each channel seems to be running one device each, so that means those devices must be set up as single drives! 1 for each channel!

Reference the photos and docs and links in my previous posts.

 

[ky]

It says that there is a diskette drive 0 seek failure.

 

[orb]

It says that there is a diskette drive 0 seek failure.

If you disconnected floppy drive, you need to switch it off in BIOS setup utility too.

 

[ky]

The problem is I dont know the password.

---------- Post added at 02:49 PM ---------- Previous post was at 02:48 PM ----------

Im going to re-try all of this.

 

[Keatah]

You might be able to clear the bios by taking out the button battery. And checking to see if there is a jumper you have to "tap" to kill the cmos data.

Also, I don't know what other important info in the bios could get erased, you'd need a dell expert to tell you. Probably nothing that couldn't be easily re-setup again though.

Read the dell documentation on the links I posted to tell you how to clear the cmos and password (if that can indeed be done).

Again, you need to read the documentation links I posted previously and these.

http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/systems/opgx260/en/ug/sysbrd.htm
http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/systems/opgx260/en/ug/advfeat.htm#1101341

AND ESPECIALLY

http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/systems/opgx260/en/ug/advfeat.htm#1110952
:thumbup:

 

[agentgonzo]

You might be able to clear the bios by taking out the button battery. And checking to see if there is a jumper you have to "tap" to kill the cmos data.

You can normally clear the bios in one of three ways, some of which may work for your PC, some may not:

1. Boot whilst holding down F11
2. Finding the CMOS-erase jumper pins on the motherboard and putting a jumper across it for a few seconds (or a screwdriver - anything that is conductive)
3. Taking the batter out and leaving it from anywhere from five minutes to half an hour as the capacitor drain.

 

[ky]

I found what I needed for the password

Disabling a Forgotten Password and Setting a New Password
NOTICE: This process erases both the system and setup passwords.
CAUTION: Before you open the computer cover, see "CAUTION: Safety Instructions."

Open the computer cover.


Remove the jumper plug labeled PSWD from the jumper.


See "Jumper Settings" to locate the password jumper.

Close the computer cover.


Reconnect your computer and devices to electrical outlets and turn them on.


This disables the existing password(s).

Enter system setup and verify that Setup Password is set to Disabled.


Exit system setup.


CAUTION: Before you open the computer cover, see "CAUTION: Safety Instructions."

Open the computer cover.


Replace the PSWD jumper plug.


Close the computer cover and reconnect the computer and devices to electrical outlets and turn them on.


This reenables the password feature. When you enter system setup, both password options appear as Not Enabled—the password feature is enabled but no password is assigned.

Assign a new system and/or setup password.

---------- Post added at 03:43 PM ---------- Previous post was at 03:37 PM ----------

Would downloading a newer BIOS help? I currently have Phoenix ROM BIOS plus version 1.10 A05 and i'm going to download A09.

 

[garyw]

Do the instructions say anything about installing a newer BIOS to remove a password?