Computer not detecting HardDrive

[ThePheonix]

I have a problem trying to build a computer... I have everything put together, and it does detect the CD rom, but not the hard drive (I tried 3 different ones I know work, and with different variations of pri.master/slave/alone, but nothing). Does anyone have an Idea of what the problem cound be? I hope it's not something stupid I overlooked.

[o_O]

Are the drives capable of cable select? Try setting them all to cable select and seeing if they're detected.
Also, are they SATA or PATA drives? If they are PATA, and the hard drive is on the same IDE cable as the CDROM drive, try changing the drive to another cable. Having them on the same one doesn't normally, but can cause trouble.

Also, does the BIOS detect them? If it does, you could have a problem with the filesystem on the drives. For example, XP won't recognise a drive with the ext2/3 Linux filesystem, or Win 98 won't recognise a drive formatted in NTFS.

[Mirage]

That's why we always should use FAT16. :).

[Samuraid]

As Face said, make sure the CD-ROM and harddrives are not sharing a cable. It's a bad idea as the cable transfer mode (PIO/DMA level) is limited by the slowest device on the cable. (as far as I know) The CD-ROM thus could lower the speed at which the hard drive could communicate.

[ThePheonix]

I checked all that alredy (tried it on the same adn seperate cables as the CD-rom) but BIOS does not detect it... It shouldn't matter what format it's in or even if it is formated or not, BIOS should still detect that the HD is there, but it doesn't... kinda wierd.

[o_O]

It shouldn't matter what format it's in or even if it is formated or not, BIOS should still detect that the HD is there, but it doesn't... kinda wierd.

That's right, which rules out an OS incompatibility; meaning you may have a hardware problem.
If the BIOS isn't detecting it, then it could well be an issue with your motherboard. Since no drive is working, it might be the IDE controller (provided you're using IDE drives). Try removing the CD drive and booting only from the hard drive.

How many IDE/SATA/PCI/AGP devices do you have in your machine? Is your PSU powerful enough to handle all of them?

You might want to play around with the boot order in your BIOS. I don't know if it's possible, but you might have HDD detection turned off, or something. You could also try flashing your BIOS, but bear in mind that can be very dangerous.

[Yamaneko]

Unplug all devices except the HDD. Make sure that if you're in cable select mode that you have the HDD attached to the master IDE cable.

If there's a master/slave jumper then it's IDE. SATA drives don't have jumpers.

[ThePheonix]

Well, it detects it now, and it was one of those >< momnets... It just wasn't detecting it before, and then it just does...

Thanks for all the suggestions!