CD rom problem plzz help

hello hackers form the hell
well recently i did hard disk to hard disk copying on my assembled pc which is p3, 20 GB,128 MB RAM,,,
but when i removed the hard disk( i had placed it with the help of power cable of CD ROM),, and the n rebooted then loading ws expectionally slow & the bios ws not showing the CD ROM to my utter horror,, worst when i clicked my computer,, there also CD ROM drive was invisible

what can be the reason for this & how to fix this,, plzz help as i 'm in a terrible mess

Quote:

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expirience is a hard teacher,, it first tests & then give lessons

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Check ALL cables first.
Your power cable could be damaged by pulling it out.
However if it works with the HDD it should work with the CD-Rom

Power OK?
Data cable OK?
Jumper settings OK?

(Perhaps you did not noticed a jumper that came off while putting the drive back.)

Which kind of disks are you using? EIDE or SCSI?
if EIDE -> check master / slave configuration
if SCSI -> check SCSI adress and terminator on last device.

(It is normal that you couldn't see the device drive name in DOS while you BIOS did not detected it.)

If all cables and jumpers are OK:
-> set your BIOS channel where your CD-Rom is on auto or on CDROM. -> Reboot -> if your HDD is bootable, has an OS on it and the proper CD drivers are loaded then your CD-Rom should work now.

Last option:
There is a little change that your CD-Rom player is damaged so check if it gets power. (does the tray open and close?).

Well, as you mentioned that your power cable for your cd-rom was the one that you used for the second drive and didn't work when you took out the other hard drive, I'd gather that you might've forgotten to plug the power back into the cd-rom, something I've done many times, hehe...

One setup I always do is this:

1: Hard drives (Primary Master optional Primary Slave) on IDE0 (first IDE slot on the motherboard)
2: CD Burner as Secondary Master
3: CD ROM as Secondary Slave

Other than that, VictorKaum's post covers most of everything you need to check, but power seems to be the main thing I saw. Did you see the light come on and did it spin up on boot time? Power + check the cable on both ends (make sure pin 1 for the IDE cable to it is closest to the power).

Vorlin's explanation gives good coverage to your prob.

Some remark:

Vorlin's setup gives you the best performance when you do a lot of CD burning from HDD, cause the burner is set as master as well as the HDD. (they have both a separate EIDE channel -> max bandwihd.)

However if you have lot of disk access and several hard disks and litlle use of CD-players and burners, I suggest to put both HDD's as master, one on IDE0 and the other on IDE1. And CD devices as slaves. This will slow down your burner but increase system HDD performance.

However Vorlin's favourite setup is still an excellent choice!