Q: Before i explain what i have done so far. I have replaced my old hard drive with a newer hard drive as my main hard drive and i want to use my old hard drive as the second hard drive! Okay, so i installed the first hard drive easily and no problems and installed on XP. Then i installed my older hard drive (now being the second/back up hard drive) in the spot where a second hard drive goes. I connected The following cables to the SECOND hard drive shown in this pic: http://i34.tinypic.com/2zjkwmr.jpg The SATA cables are the BLUE and RED ones. The BLUE one is the one that came with the pc (Dell Dimension 5100 2005 model) and the red one i picked up down at a local pc shop. I think part of the problem as to why my PC won't recognize the second hard drive is because of the connection between the SATA cable from the SECOND hard drive and the PC. Here is a pic showing both the circuits that each SATA cable connects to the PC/Motherboard: http://i37.tinypic.com/14v34fr.jpg I did an experiment when my PC wouldn't recognize my SECOND hard drive, i replaced the RED SATA cable with the BLUE SATA cable on the mother board (not the hard drives) and my second hard drive was recognized, but once switched back it was like no other drive ever existed. I followed these instructions to activate my second hard drive. Go to Start > Run and type in Diskmgmt.msc This came up: http://i37.tinypic.com/28jv3ft.jpg It only shows my new FIRST hard drive and not the second one. I have both the second and first hard drive all connected by separate SATA cables but the same power cable (it has an extension so it allows to hard drives to be powered by the one cable, picture is here http://i34.tinypic.com/2zjkwmr.jpg - Notice how the P3 cable keeps going and connects to the SECOND hard drive) So now i am stuck and have no idea what to do or how to help my pc recognize my computer. Please help =)
A: To Eliminate the cable issue do the following. 1. Use the RED cable to to connect both the Drives (New Drive first, disconnect and try again with OLD one) and check whether its booting or detecting. (USE the same SATA-port connection on the Mother board) *if both drives were detected goto step 2 2. Do the same with BLUE cable. *if both drives were detected goto step 3, this means your CABLES are working properly. If it did not detect both drives you might have to change the SATA cable and goto STEP. No.1 3. Repeat step 1 and 2 with the other SATA-port *if both drives are detected then your problem is solved, if not u might have to boot into your BIOS and enable your second SATA-port. U can do this by pressing F10 /DEL / alt+F2 button when the PC is booting up depending on your model and make. These simple steps might be able to help you solve PC troubles. Help from Chris-ITguy@JB http://chris-itguy.servehttp.com