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Hey guys,

I just bought a second SATA hard from Western Digital (HD 500G|WD 7K
16M SATA2 WD5000KS) and was trying to install it in my E510. However,
the drive isn't getting recognized after I boot up my PC with it in the
second bay (ie, WinXP isn't finding a new device and I don't see a new
drive letter in Explorer for this drive). I have a SATA0 and SATA2
connection on my mobo.
I put my SATA2 HD in the SATA0 connection and booted up the PC with a
Windows Vista Beta 2 disc, and was able to install Vista with no
problem...so it can't be the HD.
If I try to boot up the PC with only 1 of the HD (either one) connected
to the SATA2 slot, I get an error about the disk not being found (is
this because the SATA0 connection has to be made first?).
I'm not sure what I need to do with the BIOS or the jumpers. Dell's
website said that I don't need to mess with the jumpers for two SATA
drives - leaving them as is should be OK. So I'm wondering if a) I
didn't set something up in the BIOS correctly, b) there's a problem
wtih my SATA2 connection on the mobo, or c) Is there a SATA2 cable I
need to connect to the SATA2 connection versus the regular SATA cable
I'm using now?

The first hard drive that I have XP installed on is a 80GB Serial ATA
Hard Drive (7200RPM) w/DataBurst Cache™.

Thanks much.

-Peter

You have to partition/format the drive using Disk Management before it will
be seen by explorer
Check Dell support as to whether you have to make any specific changes in
the bios for the sata 2 connection
There are no jumpers or special sata2 cable to worry about

<> wrote in message
news: ups.com...
Hey guys,

I just bought a second SATA hard from Western Digital (HD 500G|WD 7K
16M SATA2 WD5000KS) and was trying to install it in my E510. However,
the drive isn't getting recognized after I boot up my PC with it in the
second bay (ie, WinXP isn't finding a new device and I don't see a new
drive letter in Explorer for this drive). I have a SATA0 and SATA2
connection on my mobo.
I put my SATA2 HD in the SATA0 connection and booted up the PC with a
Windows Vista Beta 2 disc, and was able to install Vista with no
problem...so it can't be the HD.
If I try to boot up the PC with only 1 of the HD (either one) connected
to the SATA2 slot, I get an error about the disk not being found (is
this because the SATA0 connection has to be made first?).
I'm not sure what I need to do with the BIOS or the jumpers. Dell's
website said that I don't need to mess with the jumpers for two SATA
drives - leaving them as is should be OK. So I'm wondering if a) I
didn't set something up in the BIOS correctly, b) there's a problem
wtih my SATA2 connection on the mobo, or c) Is there a SATA2 cable I
need to connect to the SATA2 connection versus the regular SATA cable
I'm using now?

The first hard drive that I have XP installed on is a 80GB Serial ATA
Hard Drive (7200RPM) w/DataBurst CacheT.

Thanks much.

-Peter

Actually it was a very simple problem to fix. All I had to do was go
into the bios and enable the sata2 drive (I guess Dell disables that
before shipping it out). Everything's up and running now.

Now I need to figure out how to have the ability to choose to boot to
XP (first sata drive) or Vista (second sata drive). Not sure how to
get it so that I have the choice upon startup.

old man wrote:
> You have to partition/format the drive using Disk Management before it will
> be seen by explorer
> Check Dell support as to whether you have to make any specific changes in
> the bios for the sata 2 connection
> There are no jumpers or special sata2 cable to worry about
>

wrote:
> Actually it was a very simple problem to fix. All I had to do was go
> into the bios and enable the sata2 drive (I guess Dell disables that
> before shipping it out). Everything's up and running now.
>
> Now I need to figure out how to have the ability to choose to boot to
> XP (first sata drive) or Vista (second sata drive). Not sure how to
> get it so that I have the choice upon startup.
>
If you had had BOTH drives working before you installed Vista, you would
have had a boot menu option. As it is now, you might be able to edit the
c:\boot.ini file to make it work. Or there may be alternative boot loaders.

But if it were ME, I'd leave it just the way it is, and unplug the XP drive
when you are going to play with VB2. That way if Vista farts, it won't smell
up your working XP install <g>

--
When I was a child, I remember my Mom telling me, "Son, when you grow
up, you can marry any girl you please." When I became a young man, I
learned the sad fact was that I could not please any of them.

Thanks for the tip Tim. I think what I'm going to do is partition the
500GB drive I have into 3 partitions. One for VB2, one for XP, and one
for backing up data from my external drive. This is the only way that
I can switch between two OS's - if they're on the same basic drive on
their own partitions. I'll leave my old 80GB drive with XP on it the
way it is now.

Thanks!


Toolman Tim wrote:
> wrote:
> > Actually it was a very simple problem to fix. All I had to do was go
> > into the bios and enable the sata2 drive (I guess Dell disables that
> > before shipping it out). Everything's up and running now.
> >
> > Now I need to figure out how to have the ability to choose to boot to
> > XP (first sata drive) or Vista (second sata drive). Not sure how to
> > get it so that I have the choice upon startup.
> >
> If you had had BOTH drives working before you installed Vista, you would
> have had a boot menu option. As it is now, you might be able to edit the
> c:\boot.ini file to make it work. Or there may be alternative boot loaders.
>
> But if it were ME, I'd leave it just the way it is, and unplug the XP drive
> when you are going to play with VB2. That way if Vista farts, it won't smell
> up your working XP install <g>
>
> --
> When I was a child, I remember my Mom telling me, "Son, when you grow
> up, you can marry any girl you please." When I became a young man, I
> learned the sad fact was that I could not please any of them.