HD gives odd behavior

[Crystalis]

Hi,

I just upgraded my computer last week or so, here are some specs

MSI 865PE-S
P4 2.8C /w HT
512 Dual DDR400

my previous system was a Dell, so I basically had to end up replacing almost everything except CD and HD. The problem I'm having is that my HD is not recognized by the bios, when I look in the bios, it can read the information about the HD but doesn't know its there.

What I had to do was install and 2nd HD as master and boot the original one as slave, I have also installed my WindowsXP onto the unrecognized HD. Now it works....but I dont want the 2nd HD in my system, does anyone know any solutions??

the faulty HD is a 20 GB seagate
the 2nd HD is a 2.1 GB generic

Thanks, any opinion would help.

[dunbar]

Was the Seagate drive installed in the old system using Seagates software tools? If yes, the software may have a BIOS overlay which can mess up the new mobo BIOS.

[B71655]

Which drive do you boot from? If it's your new 2gig one, pull it and have mb auto detect drives. What does it find? If 20 gig isn't there, start checking jumpers on drives. You say bios reads drive, but not there? I'm lost. See what if any is jumpered as master. Or cable select. Not fubar, but not much to go on. Post back, help needs info.

[DoctorReno]

I'd second what dunbar says about the disk overlay from Seagates installation utility being a likely cause. You likely will have to use the Seagate Diskwizard to do a zero fill format on the drive to remove the overlay and then repartition and format without using the Seagate setup utility and you should be good to go.
Post back if you have any questions how to do this.

BTW what OS are you going to be using?

[Crystalis]

thx for the replys..

I dont understand too much about this stuff, so I'll just tell you what I see.

If I pull out the 2GB HD(Primary Master), the bios recognizes nothing (doesnt recognize 20GB HD as slave or master, jumpers checked). When I plug it back in, it reads the 2GB HD but still does not read the 20GB HD(Primary Slave). However, when I click into the primary slave, it will show the information about the drive, the bios will recognize it when I return to main menu (does not stay after reboot, even when saved).

I am able to boot if the 2GB HD is plugged as master, 20GB as slave, my windowsXP is in the slave. I have windows98 in the master, but I don't use it.

I've check the jumpers, tried all the combinations, no effect.

Hope this helps a bit...thx

[DoctorReno]

In your BIOS, do you have it set to auto detect the drives?
When you say click into the primary slave... is this in the BIOS?

And you say that the settings do not stay after reboot. That issue points to the battery needing replacement. They only cost a little over a dollar at Wallmart and they can check your old battery to see if it is dead.