The other day i just bougth a new pc. When check n the bios, the setting of Primary IDe Master - Not detected. My HDD only detected at third IDE Master. Is it ok? I thought a HDD should be boot first on Primary.

What kinda harddisk do you have? SATA(the IDE disk with slimmer cable) or PATA(the IDE disk with wider cable)?

How many IDE/PATA ports do you have? Do you connect the IDE cable to the Primary IDE/PATA port?

Do your motherboard has SATA ports? Are they set as IDE/PATA compatibiltiy mode?

First of all, your thread shouldn't be here and suppose to be placed under Technical Support forum.

Anyway, before the moderator move your thread...

I don't really understand ur situation here as motherboard only has Primary and Secondary IDE... where u managed to get the 'THIRD' IDE?

Each Primary and Secondary IDE channel support up to 2 IDE devices each, the Master and Slave drive. It rely on the jumper setting of the IDE drive to determine whether it to be the Master or Slave. Recommended differentiate between ur optical drive such as cd/dvd/cdrw/dvdrw-rom IDE channel with ur hdd. It doesnt matter whether a hdd to be placed on the primary or secondary IDE channel but advised separate between optical drive and hdd (make sure u use ATA133 80-lines IDE cable for ur hdd as well than ATA33 40-lines ~ forgot how it to be named ). Set the drive as Master if u only have one IDE device on the particular IDE channel.

dopodplaya, i am using Sata HDD. My mobo is Asus P5GZ-MX i945G


Hmm, that's weird.. I duno how it connect as when i bought back it's like that alreasdy. I enter into Bios and that is what i saw. Third IDE Master - HDD(Numbering). Boot sequence on secong priority as first is my cdrom. Primary IDE not detected while second is my DVD Rom. I am a noob on setting up pc. hehe.

Anyway, it can be boot when placing Window Xp in it. I have 160GB Seagate HDD. So i partition it into 4 drive. 40GB x 3 and one more only 32GB. After that i choose partition in with NTFS. I am not waiting it tyo be finish as it';s kinda slow.

Am i correct? I also dun understand about the third IDE Master. Hmm, so asking question that i dun really know is some big problem to get an answer..hehe

Anyway, how can i move this thread to technical forum.

This post has been edited by adriankhoo153: Jun 11 2007, 01:24 PM

Dude, it is NOT WEIRD AT ALL. As I thought, you are using SATA disk.
Since your SATA disk is emulated as PATA disk, it is normal for the disk to be detected as third or forth Master IDE disk.

SATA connection must emulated either a) PATA or b) SCSI/RAID mode to be working.

Nothing wrong for booting from any PATA/SATA port as long the disk is bootable and running fine.

Oh, ic... Cause normally i can see my HDD as Primary IDE Master. that is why i thought it's weird as it detected at the third IDE. Anyway, thanks dude..

How bout partition? I have 160GB but after partition i only gor 40GB * 3 and one more 32GB only. I think the 8GB is for system utitlitise for HDD tio run right?

Heh, finally I also understand your problem now. Nothing much to care if u r using Sata. Just make sure ur HDD boot-sequence correctly if u r using more than 1 HDD .

Regarding ur capacity thingy, our system read 1,024KB = 1MB but the HDD manufacturer takes it as 1,000KB = 1MB. In this case of ur 160GB will be:

Manufacturer:
160GB * 1,000 = 160,000MB
160,000MB * 1,000 = 160,000,000KB

Our system:
160,000,000KB/ 1,024 = 156,250MB
156,250MB / 1,024 = 152.59GB

*pretty clear the calculation? ur HDD only need 8MB of space to store the partition information*

So u wouldn't exactly getting as CLEAN as 160GB

This post has been edited by vearn27: Jun 11 2007, 03:27 PM

it's normal for any new mobo rite...?
but if SATA u must plug to SATA 0 only can detect as primary master...

Alright vearn27 and dopodplaya. Thanks for clearing up my problem.. Problem solved!