Removing a Secondary Hard Drive

[UncleAaron]

I'm trying to remove a hard drive from an old computer system, and want to give the computer to a friend. Here's my problem. I've gone into CMOS to remove the drive, I know that the primary hard drive the one that has the OS is drive 0. I've set drive 1 to show OFF, the secondary drive 0 is the CD-ROM/DVD reader. I never touched the drive 0, parameters because that's the drive with the OS.

I then removed the cables off the drive I want to take out, save the information in CMOS, and exit. When the computer starts to boot, it just hangs. If I leave the cables on, WinXP sees the drive. I'm guessing there is something I'm missing???

Does anyone have any ideas?

[ale52]

What happens if you have the computer off / disconnect the drive you want to remove / reboot / go into the BIOS.  Does the removed drive still show?

Alan <>< 

[Salmon Trout]

I then removed the cables off the drive I want to take out, save the information in CMOS, and exit.

You unplugged the drive while the machine was powered up and running?

[patio]

There actually is no reason to even attempt editing the BIOS info...with the machine powered down disconnect the drive.
Upon re-boot the BIOS should have no reference to it at all...

It's still unclear to me what your attempting...

[patio]

Good catch Salmon Trout...i missed that.
No wonder he is now having boot issues...

[UncleAaron]

What happens if you have the computer off / disconnect the drive you want to remove / reboot / go into the BIOS.  Does the removed drive still show?

Alan <>< 

It hangs on the boot screen.

[UncleAaron]

You unplugged the drive while the machine was powered up and running?

No. I waited until the machine was completely off.

[patio]

Unplug all power to the machine.
Remove the CMOS battery for 5 minutes.
Replace the battery and power up.

[Salmon Trout]

There were 2 hard drives on this machine, yes? (IDE or SATA?)
If IDE, jumpered how? master/slave? cable select?
One held the operating system; you removed the other, yes?
The CD/DVD drive is connected how? (i.e. is it on another IDE channel?)
What drives show up in the bios?
What happens if you put back the drive you took out?

[UncleAaron]

Unplug all power to the machine.
Remove the CMOS battery for 5 minutes.
Replace the battery and power up.

Ok. I followed your request, and I have the CMOS up on screen:

Primary Drive 0: Unknown Device
Primary Drive 1: Unknown Device
Secondary Drive 0: Unknown Device
Secondary Drive 1: Unknown Device

If I go to change these myself, it won't let me.

I now doesn't recognize the CD/DVD drive, and I have done nothing to it.

Also, the boot sequence is "floppy drive" and the CD/DVD and Hard Drive are NOT listed.

[UncleAaron]

There were 2 hard drives on this machine, yes? (IDE or SATA?)
If IDE, jumpered how? master/slave? cable select?
One held the operating system; you removed the other, yes?
The CD/DVD drive is connected how? (i.e. is it on another IDE channel?)
What drives show up in the bios?
What happens if you put back the drive you took out?

There are 2 IDE drives, and I'm removing the secondary one. The drive I'm leaving in, is configured to be the master. The CD/DVD drive is on another cable.

[Salmon Trout]

This is an old machine... how certain are you there is any juice left in the cmos battery? Are the IDE ribbon cables OK, not cracked or split?

[UncleAaron]

This is an old machine... how certain are you there is any juice left in the cmos battery? Are the IDE ribbon cables OK, not cracked or split?

I changed the cable to the HD's when I installed the secondary drive, which was 2004. I see no cracks in the cables. The system is 8 1/2 year old.

[Salmon Trout]

Perhaps the motherboard and/or the psu just died?

[patio]

Replace the ribbon cable with a new one.
Then re-boot...enter Setup and run the HDD detector in the BIOS...