WD800JB: Primary drive 1 not found

#1

I used to have 2 WD EIDE drives in a DELL Dimension 3000. At some point I decided to get rid of the slave WD800BB, thus jumpering the master WD800JB to “cable select”.

I never had a boot issue with the 2 drives, but as soon as I remove the second, the computer would stop at the BIOS logo at any start for like half a minute, then popping the notorious “Primary drive 1 not found” screen, with the options to strike either the F1 or F2 key.

Once I strike F1 the machine boots normally, and in the BIOS the WD800JB is being recognized correctly.

What could be causing this?  I have a second Dimension 3000 with only a WD800BB on cable select, and that one starts up with no delay.

Thanks,

Martin

#2

Reset your BIOS settings to defaults. Check if BIOS recognizes the HDD as a master.

Make sure your drive is connected to the end part of the cable when using cable select. Keep in mind that you will need a proper IDE cable (80-Conductor) for cable select to work.

If you’re using just one drive, I would recommend switching it to Master (single) instead of cable select and connecting it to the primary IDE channel socket (blue).

#3

The Cable Select feature does not require an 80-conductor IDE cable.

Pin 28 of the IDE interface is the Cable Select pin:
http://pinouts.ru/HD/AtaInternal_pinout.shtml

The respective conductor may be cut, or the pin removed from the connector.

#4

Thanks for your input guys. Well cable select is actually the recommended mode for older DELL machines. And both 3000 are configured identically, except for their operating systems.

Believe it or not, but their “toy” BIOS does not even have an option to set them back to default/setup settings. The only way to reset it was to remove the cmos battery for like a minute, and that indeed fixed it!