Dual Hard disk problem

[CR125Honda]

Hi all,
I have two IDE hard drives installed on my computer. The master is a 10 gig Maxtor. Slave or (second drive) is an 80 gig Western Digital.

Problem - The WD slave stops working after a minute or two of idle time. I either need to reboot or go into device manager and "scan for hardware changes" to get it going again.

After checking the Device Manager the locations of the different drives are -

Maxtor - Location 0 (0)
WD - Location 1 (1)

My CD burner is also on Location 1 (1)

I'm assuming this to be my problem?? The WD hard disk and the CD are sharing the same ribbon inside the computer. Is this a no-no?? Can I fix this through Device Manager or do I need to change my setup and tie the two hard drives together using the same ribbon or??

Or maybe the WD is going into some sort of sleep mode??

Could use some help here..

Thanks, Ken

[Atomic Rooster]

Try setting the 80Gb WD as "master" on the second IDE cable with the CDRW as slave.

[Bill in SD, CA]

Or slave it to the Maxtor.

Bill

[jmichna]

Atomic and Bill are both correct...
You can only have two devices on an IDE cable, and only one of these can be master and the other must be slave.
In your situation you have options...
Assume Maxtor as IDE-0 Master, then WD as IDE-1 Master and CD-RW as IDE-0 Slave or IDE-1 Slave
OR....
Assume Maxtor as IDE-0 Master, then WD as IDE-0 Slave and CD-RW as IDE-0 Master
OR....
Assume Maxtor as IDE-0 Master, then CR-RW as IDE-1 Master, WD as IDE-0 Slave or IDE-1 Slave
OR....
[holds his head... hurts soooo bad.....]

Sometimes, you just go with what makes the most sense from a cable routing/physical drive location standpoint. Since I'd guess your CD-RW is located way up high, it probably would fit better -- from cable standpoint -- if made the IDE-1 Master... then your WD can be connected to this cable (IDE-1 Slave) or the Maxtor's cable (IDE-0 Slave).

[MaxVal]

If you are using current hardware with 80 wire cables it's easiest to set everything to C.S. (Cable Select).
The connector that is placed on the device sets master/slave, the end connector being master.

[CR125Honda]

Hi All,
Thanks for all the help/advise, much appreciated.. I'm away from home for a few days and will see if I can work this out when I get back. Will let you know how how it turns out.

Thanks again, Ken