Secondary Hard Drive 0 not found

my parents have an optiplex and they are having this same problem.  my brother burned a cd in a cd/rw drive and everything was fine.  on the next restart, he got the secondary hard drive 0 is not found.  hit f1 or f2....  i went into the bios and it listed secondary drive 0 as "unknown".

they have a HP cd/rw connected as the secondary slave drive to the middle connector of the ide cable and a samsung dvd/cd drive jumped to cable select and connected to the end of the ide cable.  in device manager, the samsung is listed, but not the cd/rw and the cd/rw is also not listed in "my computer".

 

i appreciate any help on this guys and gals.

brandon

Message Edited by chi_town60608 on 10-10-2003 11:49 PM

I'm having this problem as well with an SX270. I set it up and installed everything fine. About a week later when the user booted the PC she got this error and it doesn't find her CD-RW at all. I'm going to be calling Dell if nobody answers here. Seems like forums are usually a faster way to get a response & less headache.

Bryan

It's an SX270 which is the small form factor. This is the only drive in the PC. I can't switch the cables or anything. I tried a new cd drive and it worked for about half an hour then quit, no warning, etc. I'm going to be calling Dell to find out what the deal is.

Any ideas?
Bryan

A QUICK FIX: Here's what worked for me (I don't know if it will work for you!):

1. Reboot

2. Hit F2 continuously until you see the gray Dell "menu"

3. Make sure Num Lock, Caps Lock, and Scroll Lock are all ON (lights are lit)

4. Hit the Alt key and the F key simultaneously

5. Hit the Alt key and the E key simultaneously

6. Hit Esc

7. Choose "Save changes and Exit"

Obviously, this doesn't tell you WHY it happened, nor HOW to prevent it from happening again -- sorry, that I don't know...

I have a similar problem with my Optiplex G1. I just installed a new CD-RW drive, using the same cable and position as the original Dell-supplied CD-ROM drive. Now every time the PC boots up I get that same error message as per this thread. I have to press F1 to continue or F2 to run Setup. If I press F2, and look at the Secondary HD 0 setting, it is correctly at Auto but is listed as an Unknown Device.

If I press Save and Exit (or Exit without saving since no changes were made) (or if I pressed F1 originally to continue booting and not run Setup), Windows 2000 boots up fine and the drive is fully accessible and functional (it came with the Nero burning software, which I'm using).

The problem is that the BIOS is not recognizing the drive but Windows 2000 has no problems with the drive. (Of course, if I set the BIOS to No Drive, then Windows does NOT see the drive.)

Does anyone have any ideas on this problem? Tonight I am going to verify that the Master/Slave/Cable Select jumpers are the same as the old drive which was working (I think that is what I set). If it is in Cable Select, which is the Dell default, I'll try Master because some people said that is needed for some drives.

Hope to get some replies and will keep all advised because this seems to be a very popular - and common - topic and problem.

Its only a common problem because people dont set the jumper to cable select on the drives like they are supposed to.

I double-checked. My CD-RW's jumper was indeed set to Cable Select as I thought (as was the old CD-ROM drive). So I tried Master, but got EXACTLY THE SAME RESULTS: The BIOS on Auto Detect does not recognize the drive, but Windows 2000 does and the new drive works fine. The only problem is having to press F1 to ignore the BIOS warning that the "Secondary Drive0 not found" which is not the end of the world, but annoying and should not happen.

I checked Dell's release notes on a latest rev. BIOS, but the last change regarding ATAPI devices was rev. A02 and I have A06.

I checked with the drive's mfgr (KHypermedia) and their FAQ's says it must be a BIOS problem. Any other suggestions would be appreciated. Thank you.

Cable Select and (Master or SLave) DO NOT MIX.

UDMA Drives do not slave well to PIO Drives
PIO Drives do not Slave well to UDMA Drives

Older Drives 500Meg to 6 Gig may be OLD PIO drives.

You can temporarily put them on the Cdrom cable with the CDROM disconnected to copy data from them but you cannot have them on the same cable as a new UDMA drive.

Some drives have 4 settings instead of 3

The Master, Slave, Cable Select, and NON ATAPI Drive.

Cable Select is the way the drives are set for dell.

Also some jumpers are really cheap so even though they are on they dont make contact and are equivalent to not having any jumper at all installed.

Thanks for the suggestions but little seems relevant. There is only the new CD-RW drive on the secondary IDE channel. And while I did not measure the jumper plug with an ohmmeter, I can see and feel that it is good (and it's brand new). I think that the biggest clue here is that the BIOS does not recognize it but Windows 2000 does.

Question re. your first suggestion: Does using the Cable Select postition necessitate the use of a SPECIAL cable designed for that? If so, will that special cable also work with Master/Slave jumpering? I am aware that the Dell uses Cable Select, which was the jumper position of the old CD-ROM drive that I'm replacing, and is why I first used Cable Select for my new drive (and the same cable), but this still did not allow the BIOS to recognize the drive (it sees something there, though, just does not identify it as a CD drive). Dell's BIOS is not as sophisticated as others I've seen, even from that era. Very basic.

Thank you.

Never mind. I found a good article at:
http://www.pcguide.com/ref/hdd/if/ide/confCS-c.html
It and other articles said that Cable Select Cables ARE compatible with Master/Slave jumpering.

However, it said that the Master connector is the one in the MIDDLE of the cable, not at the end as pictured in Dell's article:
http://support.dell.com/us/en/kb/document.asp?DN=TI1014125

My CD-RW drive is connected to the connector at the END of the cable. Should it be the middle one? Thanks.

I attempted to install a second hard drive and a CD-ROM that I had salvaged from a previous computer on the same day.  I only have a slight knowledge of computer hardware and slightly more re:OS and software, but more than the average user.

I ended up having to take out the second CD drive, so my computer would recognize one (at first, it recognized the new hard drive but not either the old or new CD drives).  The old drive doesn't realize it is a CD-RW anymore.  However, tonight I found a place here on the Dell site that DID say the CD-RW should be using the middle connector, so I will try that.

But do you think I just tried to add too much at once?  If I try putting the salvaged CD-ROM in, do you think the computer will miss both again?  I should mention that the computer I am discussing is a Dell, less than a year old, which I ordered with a 3 1/4 floppy and just the one CD-RW, to my regret.  Hence the desire to add the second.

It should not matter how many devices you put in at once, but sometimes going one at a time can help you determine what works and what does not. Also, they say you should try to keep hard drives on one cable (IDE Channel), and CD devices on the other.This is so the fast hard drive is not slowed down by the CD drive.

However, I don't think you really need the CD-ROM drive when you have a CD-RW drive. I have an internal CD-ROM drive on my HP Pavillion, and since it did not have a bay available for another 5-1/4" device, I got an external, USB, (HP) CD-Writer. However the USB interface it is limited to 4x. What I should have done is gotten a fast internal CD-RW drive and replaced my CD-ROM drive. When you want to copy a CD, it still works fine. It first copies the source CD onto the hard drive and then writes the blank one. With a 12x or 16x CD-RW, that's faster than copying from my CD-ROM to the CD-Writer. (Plus I would have saved a lot of money.)

Can you give me the link to the Dell article that says the "master" connector with the Cable Select jumper position is the middle connector? Did you try it and does it work?

  I am happy to report that it did in fact work!  I un-partioned the second hard drive, so that's cool now.  I also went ahead and installed the CD-ROM, using the middle connector for the CD-RW and the end connector for the CD-ROM and....

 

success!!  I made myself a nice little cd of favorite songs to listen to in the car!

I found the info by going to the references tab, user's guides, Tech overview, IDE connections and cables (or something).  At least, that's where the info is for my system, a Dimensions 4550.  After user's guides, you have to select an item - like 'systems' - and then find yours on the list.  It isn't until you are on the contents page for your system that you'll see the tech overview link.

Message Edited by lil bit o-know on 02-22-2004 08:27 PM

We have had a similar problem with four new GX270 systems in desktop cases.  On initial boot the drives were correctly identified, but on about 1 in 4 reboots the secondary master (the CD-ROM drive) was not recognised.  The CD-ROM drives are made by Samsumg.

In discussion with Gold Support, who had apparently never seen this problem before, I swapped one of the CD-ROM drives for a CD-RW/DVD drive (borrowed from a Precision 360).  After at least a dozen reboots the problem never reappeared.  Dell have now sent me four CD-ROM drives made by HL Data Soorage, which I have now fitted in the four PCs - and the problem has not been seen since.

It appears that there could be some incompatability between the Samsung drives and the motherboards used in the desktop systems.  I have not yet tried one of the Samsung drives in a different type of system, but intend to do so in the next couple of days.