Primary Slave Hard Disk Error

[jimmie_d123]

A while ago I upgraded our Sky+ box using a 250GB Hitachi Deskstar and it worked perfectly for a while. However, after one of sky's updates the system developed problems with recordings failing and the system hanging etc. I had a little look around and found that others who had upgraded were having similar probelms, so I took the drive out and replaced with the original, leaving the relatively new Deskstar in its box collecting dust on a shelf.

Recently I've been running out of space on my 200GB Western Digital Caviar drive, and since I'm planning to switch to Windows MCE, I thought I'd put the Deskstar into my machine too to make space for more video. However, I just can't get the system to boot with both drives connected.

I tried adding the Deskstar as a slave on the same IDE cable as the Caviar, but no joy despite trying every possible combination of jumper settings. When booting, the system detects that 2 drives are present and reports them as 'Capable and Status OK' but only shows the details of the first drive then hangs before loading Windows.

The best I can get is to set the jumpers to 'slave' whilst 'Disabling Auto Spin'. In this case, the details of both drives are given and the PC continues to load until a 'Primary Slave Hard Disk Error' message appears. Windows then loads as usual but obviously the second hard drive can't be seen.

I've tried both drives as master/slave and also with both set to cable select.

When just booting with the Deskstar as the only drive, it is reported as usual but again the system just hangs at this point.

I've tried using a different cable and still the same problem.

I've tried taking the DVD drive out and trying both drives on separate IDE channels. Again both drives are reported but the PC does not continue to load.

Having done all this I've come to the conclusion that the Deskstar drive is gone, but just wanted this confirmed before chucking it.

My motherboard is an ASUS P4P800-E and I'm running XP Pro.

Thanks for any help.

 

[Chocki]

It may just be that the sky box has locked the HD as a security measure just like the x-box does, this is to prevent it being used in a PC and copying data from it (Films).

If this is the case, you are in trouble.

What you have to do is see if it is recognised as a drive in BIOS first of all, if it is, then you have to do a very low level wipe of the drive, basically a blind write of 0's to it, it can be done with the manufacturers HD utils usually.

It can be a PITA as the drive is usually still locked but can now be unlocked with some appropriate hardware like a chipped x-box (Depends on the chip).

Once unlocked, you should be able to wipe it and re-use it again.