Josh writes in with a hardware question
Q. After unhooking a used computer to see total space of the two hard drives, and inserting 4 memory cards, I rehooked all the cables back into the motherboard and hard-drives. Upon start-up my screen tells me that I have no disk-drives (2 are hooked up) and no hard-drives (again, 2 are hooked up) It won't go to anything else. I unhooked everything and started fresh, I'm not 100% sure that everything is in it's original positions, but I still get the same screen. Not sure what to do from here.
A. The first thing you should do is to check the cables and jumpers on the 2 drives. If they are both on the same cable then one has to be master and one has to be slave unless both are set to use cable select. This allows the drive to assume the proper role of master or slave based on the connector used on the cable. You have to use either one or the other. The master drive will be the one with the operating system on it. Also make sure the ribbon cable is installed correctly. The red stripe on the edge is pin #1 and usually is closest to the power plug on the back of the drive. Make sure it is set properly on the motherboard as well. Plus be sure to make sure the cables are seated properly.
If you added more memory I would set that back to the original configuration. It shouldn't affect whether the computer recognizes the hard drives but might be a good idea until you get it resolved.
You can also check the BIOS settings to see if the computer is set to auto detect the drives. These settings shouldn't have changed but it may be a good thing to check.
You may also want to try hooking up one drive at a time to see if you can get it started that way and then troubleshoot from there. It really sounds like something was plugged in wrong since both drives are not being recognized.
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