Oh, I hope you can help me in my first vanity post!....lol...

You have to jumper one of your drives to MASTER and the other to SLAVE if they're on the same IDE bus, i.e. they're attached to the same ribbon cable. The jumpers are on the drives and there should be a legend on the drive label showing you which jumper is which. Start there and see where you get.

Will the system recognize any hard drives? Can you get to your BIOS?

no, they were on separate cables, and according to Maxtor, the jumpers to transfer data on the drives (unless I read it wrong) had to be master position. I then made major screwups.... And now, back tracking, to no luck. Dang, I re did the cyl, hds, and sec then lost it again! Give me an IBM or an HP and I can configure it. This emachine is crap to rebuild or upgrade. I don't want to re tweak my programs!......

I'm gonna try to duplicate what you did on mine, but first im going to del c:\

I put the win 98 start up disk in A: that is fine, but won't Fdisk now, or show me how to get to the F1 key. Very slow to boot! I don't want to do a total re format! It is only a small 4.3 gig, but has primary programs that link with D: drive programs... And I thought this was going to be easy....LOL...

. Dang, I re did the cyl, hds, and sec then lost it again!

I thought every BIOS in the last 5 years had an Autoconfig option, so you would not have to enter heads/cylinders, etc. But, I've never seen an eMachine.

Socialists in Congress? Click on the zeppelin, Grasshopper.

Does your BIOS have an AUTO DETECT setting for the hard drives? If so, select and save that setting and reboot the machine and see if it detects the hard drive. Do this without the Maxtor drive hooked up.

wait.... don't forget the beer..Budlight!...lol...

I think my problem came when I was trying to position and park the drives the way I wanted them with Maxtor plus software disk. I was wanting to take the original primary to secondary and the new hard drive to primary. I still had the d primary master slave functioning. Fear of screwing that up, I disconnected it and proceeded on the installation instructions. But lost the drives on boot up. They are there but need to get to the set up mode key to program the sequence information. I don't think they should be programmed on auto.....

Very slow to boot!

I've had some Seagate drives where I jumped for Master according to the legend (rather than the way they were delivered), and got VERY slow bootups -- like 5 minutes. When I returned the jumper to original position, all was well.

Socialists in Congress? Click on the zeppelin, Grasshopper.

when in doubt, keep the old world info at hand...manual configuration if last resort....LOL....Yeah, was suppose to be auto....

Wooooooooah.

DON'T format anything.

NOTHING.

Best bet is to WRITE DOWN what you've done so far.

Then stop and take a breath.

Then invest about 45.00 bucks by going to your local MicroCenter (or self-owned PC shop) and telling them HWAT you did and what you need (transfer data, reload data from old to new and then rename drives, trandeer and replace .... etc.)

Now (in the midddle of the night - while you're worried and manipulating your files and previous programs) isn't the time to be trying to rewrite hard disks while tring to save just a few bucks.

In fact .... just by walking in and telling the guy what you've done you'll probably save sevral hours of troubling (and replacement/repair) time.

(No telling what he'll charge if promise him a beer!)

I think that is where I errored. I did it, but I think I didn't save the settings. And now, I can't figure how I got there. The emg. Win 98 disk gives me all these possibles, but I just need to figure if it is hold down F1 or F2 set up key to get to the BIOS configurations ...Like I said, IBM... or their clones, piece of cake. These types with their own OEM, more of a headache.

So, you can't get into the BIOS setup? Don't forget to try the Delete key. I had to deal with an old Compaq where there was NO keystroke to get into BIOS. Had to connect or disconnect a drive to force my way in.

Socialists in Congress? Click on the zeppelin, Grasshopper.

wait.... don't forget the beer..Budlight!...lol...

That's your problem right there. If you think Budlight is beer, you certainly shouldn't be manually configuring sector/head data in bios! :^)
cheers,
Ian
Seattle beer snob and computer weenie

Yeah, CompUSA wants 50.00 to data transfer, free to install since I bought the hard drive there. But I have to watch and wait. Over an hour!...I have some sensitive info on one hard drive that is not privy to other eyes....LOL.... If in reformatting, I would lose linkage to the D: drive and have to reinstall the software all over again. For me, that is two days worth of slaving over this pc. I tweaked it just to my liking...That is why the Ghost is excellent to transfer data from one drive to another. I can't believe I did this!

When in doubt, break out the user's manual.....and call the 1-800 number listed inside.

;>)

I'm outta here for the night--good luck!

oh man, those compaq of older years were something else! Very hard to correct errors! I did it though. Many hours of cursing at them too!

LOL .... well, if I had anything stronger, I am out of here.... light weight now! Keeps me mind going!.....

Nite! :o)