Seagate 80GB ATA Hard Drive Trouble

**Smoke20** · January 27th, 2006, 12:35 PM

Hi all.
I just added the drive listed as a secondary drive in my Dell 4550 and Windows XP Home recognizes the drive but fails to install a driver for it. From what I have read the device doesn't require a driver. I can use the drive normally but the problem I have is every reboot Windows tries to install the drive and it is very annoying.I tried seagate seatools etc and have not had this problem corrected. Does anyone know why windows keeps trying to install drivers for my hard drive. Thanks in advance for helping me out.

**Ahcoraj** · January 27th, 2006, 01:43 PM

Have you tried changing it from whatever it is to cable select, master or slave...see if one of the other settings helps.....

**Stalemate** · January 27th, 2006, 02:04 PM

Achoraj said it before I did.

Check your jumper settings on your drive(s) and if you can, try a different cable and/or IDE controller on your motherboard to see where the problem lies.

This secondary drive should be hooked up to the middle connector on the cable and it's jumpers set to "slave", while the other (OS) drive should be connected to the end of the IDE ribbon with it's jumpers set to "master".

Sometimes letting both devices at "cable select" will also work, as Ach pointed out.

**Smoke20** · January 27th, 2006, 02:05 PM

Sorry I forgot to mention that in the origional post. I tried using the drive as the Slave and as Cable Select which is reccomended by Dell and windows continues to try and install drivers after evry reboot.

**Smoke20** · January 27th, 2006, 02:07 PM

Currently both drives are set on Cable Select, and set up on the IDE cable as Master at the end and Secondary in the middle.

**Smoke20** · January 27th, 2006, 05:21 PM

I tried the jumpers as master and slave with the same results. Does anyone know if there is drivers for this hard drive?...

***DonJ*** · January 27th, 2006, 06:16 PM

From Seagate's website here:
http://www.seagate.com/support/kb/di...ll_tshoot.html

Notice the link about 2/3's the way down for How to install an additional hard drive using Windows XP Disk Management.

Lot's of good info there.

Good Luck!

**Smoke20** · January 27th, 2006, 08:43 PM

Thanks for the url DonJ. I went to the site and read up on it, and my drive is being listed as active and healthy. Just don't understand why it insists on a driver for this drive after every reboot. OMGmissinglink....The jumpers have been checked and double checked and are correct and the drive was formated prior to installation on another machine at work.

**Smoke20** · January 27th, 2006, 11:56 PM

They are different brand drives. The primary is an IDE Western Digital and the Secondary is an UltraATA Seagate. My computer does not have a floppy drive. Is there an alternate way fdisk the 2nd drive?..

**leezer3** · January 28th, 2006, 05:34 AM

Rot

There is no need to do anything like what OMGMissinglink suggests.
I've used all sorts of different brands & sizes of drives together in many different OSs with no problems.

Have you tried starting in safemode and looking for new hardware?
Also, does the BIOS correctly recognise both drives (Ie. With the old one as pri-master & the new as sec. slave?)
Finally, you might want to try the drive on the other IDE channel as master and see if this helps.

-Leezer-

**Ferrit** · January 28th, 2006, 10:23 AM

Originally Posted by OMGmissinglink

Then you say you formated the drive at work then installed in the machine, now are the harddrives the same brand? XP has build in drivers for the hardrives but now if the drives are different brands you must boot the machine using floppy boot disk, fdisk the second drive as an extended partition then format the drive.

UMMMM NO

***DonJ*** · January 28th, 2006, 10:34 AM

Did you ever go into WinXP's Disk Management for Installing an Additional Hard Drive?
http://www.seagate.com/support/kb/di...disk_mgmt.html

Did you format with NTFS or FAT32 or what?

**Smoke20** · January 28th, 2006, 10:51 AM

I formatted the drive with NTFS, and I did check out the uRL you had posted earlier. Disk Management does see the drive and reports it as healthy. Just windows wants to install drivers for this drive on every reboot still.

**slavedriver** · January 28th, 2006, 02:27 PM

Originally Posted by Smoke20

I formatted the drive with NTFS, and I did check out the uRL you had posted earlier. Disk Management does see the drive and reports it as healthy. Just windows wants to install drivers for this drive on every reboot still.

Your PC does it include a CDRW or CDR drive.

**leezer3** · January 28th, 2006, 07:35 PM

First and foremost, that only applies to WinME & below (IE. Not the NT based OSs)
Secondly, there is only a slim possibility of conflicts in this situation- I have run drives like this many times

Still talking rot.

-Leezer-