Micro drive not recognized as Slave

kekoa · 21-06-2008, 09:30 PM

Hi everybody -

Having built a "silent" PC sporting two CF2IDE adapters (jumpered as Master and Slave respectively) equipped with identical Compact Flash (2 GB) cards. This setup worked fine for several months.

Then I decided to swap these with two identical Hitachi (4 GB) Micro drives after I learned of the limited life span (write cycles) of the CF modules.

Problem I've encountered: Although both Micro drives work fine, I haven't been able to achieve having them running in parallel replacing the two CF modules, as the Slave drive unfortunateley isn't recognized by the BIOS.

Does anybody have any suggestions..? Thanks.

Big B · 24-06-2008, 10:33 AM

What are the specs of this system?

kekoa · 25-06-2008, 07:10 AM

Big B: yes, of course, here are the specs:

It's a rather old system;
mainboard Elitegroup P5HX-B, Pentium-S 166 MHz, 32 MB RAM, Award BIOS v4.51 PG.

For years, it had running two Quantum IDE hard drives (1 GB each) as Master/Slave without any problems. They were still operating alright when I replaced them (due to their age, well beyond 8 years).

The CF adapters I use now are of type Fibrionic FG-ADIDE2CF-B1-01-PE01. When CF cards are used for both, Master/Slave recognition isn't a problem. However, in mixed mode (one card, one hdd) the hard drive has to be jumpered as Master to be recognized.

To prove a point, this morning I put in a newly acquired 80 GB PATA hard drive jumpered as slave; nicely recognized by the BIOS in both bays as such, as long as it sat by its own.

So my guess is that it has something to due with the IDE/CF adapters behaving differently depending whether they see a CF card or a Micro drive....

21-06-2008, 09:30 PM	#1 (permalink) Top
kekoa Geek Trainee Join Date: Jun 2008 Posts: 5 Times Helpful: 3 Status: Offline	Micro drive not recognized as Slave Hi everybody - Having built a "silent" PC sporting two CF2IDE adapters (jumpered as Master and Slave respectively) equipped with identical Compact Flash (2 GB) cards. This setup worked fine for several months. Then I decided to swap these with two identical Hitachi (4 GB) Micro drives after I learned of the limited life span (write cycles) of the CF modules. Problem I've encountered: Although both Micro drives work fine, I haven't been able to achieve having them running in parallel replacing the two CF modules, as the Slave drive unfortunateley isn't recognized by the BIOS. Does anybody have any suggestions..? Thanks.

24-06-2008, 10:33 AM	#2 (permalink) Top
Big B HWF Godfather Join Date: Dec 2001 Age: 28 Male Posts: 9,636 Times Helpful: 585 My Mood: Devilish Status: Offline My Computer	What are the specs of this system? __________________ Hardware Forums\|HWF Rules\|My DVD's\|PSU FAQ\|HWF Folding Team\|2CPU

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25-06-2008, 07:10 AM	#3 (permalink) Top
kekoa Geek Trainee Join Date: Jun 2008 Posts: 5 Times Helpful: 3 Status: Offline	Big B: yes, of course, here are the specs: It's a rather old system; mainboard Elitegroup P5HX-B, Pentium-S 166 MHz, 32 MB RAM, Award BIOS v4.51 PG. For years, it had running two Quantum IDE hard drives (1 GB each) as Master/Slave without any problems. They were still operating alright when I replaced them (due to their age, well beyond 8 years). The CF adapters I use now are of type Fibrionic FG-ADIDE2CF-B1-01-PE01. When CF cards are used for both, Master/Slave recognition isn't a problem. However, in mixed mode (one card, one hdd) the hard drive has to be jumpered as Master to be recognized. To prove a point, this morning I put in a newly acquired 80 GB PATA hard drive jumpered as slave; nicely recognized by the BIOS in both bays as such, as long as it sat by its own. So my guess is that it has something to due with the IDE/CF adapters behaving differently depending whether they see a CF card or a Micro drive....

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