Arogl Darthu's Blog - Comments

Embarrasssed: BIOS IDE Detection Hell

nospam@example.com (Embarrasssed) — Wed, 20 May 2009 05:34:26 +0000

I'm glad I found this. I'm embarrassed... I work with this stuff all day... I assumed it was on cable select...didn't think it mattered if it was master. I was wrong. Ha ha ..Newman!

Twan: BIOS IDE Detection Hell

nospam@example.com (Twan) — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 06:34:31 +0000

Nice to hear I'm not the only one experiencing this IDE detection quirk...

RichT: BIOS IDE Detection Hell

nospam@example.com (RichT) — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 01:50:41 +0000

I had exactly the same issue and when I changed from MASTER to Cable Select, the boot was lickity-split and it FINALLY resolved my install issue of the drive not being recognised.

Twan: BIOS IDE Detection Hell

nospam@example.com (Twan) — Mon, 26 Feb 2007 13:15:55 +0000

Hi Bart,

I used two seperate cables with both devices set to master and at the right end of the cables.

BTW, I didn't check for any BIOS updates. So that's still something to look into.

Thanks for the input

Bart: BIOS IDE Detection Hell

nospam@example.com (Bart) — Sat, 24 Feb 2007 17:47:21 +0000

Oh yeah, I forgot, to bad I can't edit my last comment by the way.

Try updating the BIOS software to the latest version. It usually won't hurt and if you're still testing anyway problems may resolve or surface by doing so. Actually I never had a bad experience with updating a BIOS. But that doesn't mean it's fool-proof.

Oh, yeah, another thing, I don't think this was the case but, you didn't jumper both devices as Master and connected them on the same (ide)cable?
Anyway, to get the best results in speed from your IDE-devices, try to use a separate IDE-cable to connect them and set them as master. If for example you are unable to do so because of more then 2 devices or to little IDE-controllers on the board, use a setup like this:

Primary
** Master - HDD
** Slave - HDD/Optical-Reader(use only as last resort)
Secondary
** Master - Optical-Burner/HDD
** Slave - Optical-Reader/HDD

True, because of Burn-proof and similar techniques a burner does not need to be set as Master, but because of the speed of today's burners it's better to do so anyway.
Having a second hard-drive set as Secondary Slave it preferred (when using a optical-burner) because the burner is usually not nearly used/accessed as much as the HDD and so speed and access-time is nearly not impacted (though burning from, or accessing, the second HDD will be speed-impacted).

Ok, enough now, maybe I should be starting my own blog on these kind of subjects
However, with these extra cents added, it'll probably be enough to get you going.