Hard drive Caddy problem

Hi All,

I wanted to be able to boot from 2 different hard drives for different people and it was suggested that I use removable hard drive caddys that go in a 5.25" slot and would allow me to swap over drives. I installed the caddy and it will work from one drive but not the other. The first drive is just a 4GB drive with XP installed and this works fine. The second is a 160GB drive, again with Xp installed but when it boots, it gets as far as the windows start up screen, I get a blue screen flash up (which I assume is a memory error) and then the the pc re-boots and goes into boot-up options. It will only allow me to boot into safe mode Can anyone shed any light on this?

Thanks in advance for any help

Vijay

 

it's probaly just the molex connector (power connector on either the hdd (inside the caddy)) thats loose, just to make sure by pushing both connectors (molex and IDE) but the more often than not the molex conector plugging into the caddy, i used to use a removable caddy, in my opinion you need a new to get another caddy

 

Hi,

I've tried a second caddy and it had the same problem. It just seems to be with this drive.

Vijay

 

on your keyboard directly above the "Page Up" key is the "Pause/Break" key press this key while your computer detects IDE devices then waggle the molex connectors and push home the IDE cable (just to make sure) then when you hear your drive spin into action press "Spacebar" to continue booting then totally eliminat the caddy by plugging your drive directly into the IDE cable, and a different molex connector, if the drive still won't spin up try replacing the IDE cable (just a standard 30 pin IDE cable will do, just for testing purposes) then i'd have t suspect the drive may be faulty

 

Hi,

Sorry, should have said that the drive works perfectly when plugged straight into the IDE cable. it's just when I change it to the caddy (but the caddy works perfectly with the 4GB drive)

 

Did you install Windows on the 160GB HDD, whilst it was connected to your current computer?

If the hard disk was connected to a different computer when installation took place, then it won't work. Windows will be looking for specific hardware, which obviously won't be there in a different computer.

 

Hi,

Yes, the 160GB was my main drive on the computer before the caddy was installed. It's in there right now plugged straight to the IDE cable bypassing the caddy.

Vijay

 

right then, i think it's either the molex connector (try another one if possible) or it's the IDE cable that is at fault, try a new IDE cable first (easier) but hdd caddy's are generally inconsistant when it comes to powering up a drive

 

Hi,

But it does recognize the 160GB drive, just won't go into windows, would that still be a connector?

Cheers

Vijay

 

let me think about it for a while

 

sorry, my mistake, i didn't see that you can boot into safe mode, sorry, i'm now at a loss as to what the problem could be, hopefully megamaced will look in again because he will probably be more help than me, sorry

 

no probs, thanks for looking at it for me. It's a bit of a confusing one!! lol

Vijay

 

tell me about it, i'd have a headache if i were you, sorry i couldn't be more help, i'll check back later, hope you get it sorted