Thanks to the tech crew

Hi, I just wanted to say thank you to the people who tool the time to try and help me with my problem of hard drives. I also wanted to express my confusion over Doug locking the thread at the point he did. Doug, my final post before you said the thread 'was going nowhere', was to exclaim that Ubuntu works! And I still had a secondary problem of how to wire the drives so that the 40gb Seagate is recognized as the primary for the OS installation instead of the 15gb quantum. Jumper settings did not seem to be doing it. As you said, you cannot be talking about workarounds to software issues, and as you said, I acknowledged that, we had already progressed to Linux, legal, so I don't get the problem - unless it was the fact that shared software had even been mentioned in the first pllace that was the original no-no, in which case I have just committed that taboo again. Anyway, just expressing my confusion over the timing of your locking the thread and bringing back the lingering concern. Would love to hear more. You all have been very helpful Dave

Hi Dave,

Thanks for your follow-up.
And thanks for the questions about my action to Close the thread.
I do recognize how my doing so at that particular moment in the sequence could be frustrating.

You are entirely welcome to post a New Topic to address the Hard Drive installation/configuration, and or questions/comments that may arise about Linux OS or any other topic that you wish to address.

You have not committed any "taboo" behavior.
You have been upfront and clearly willing to take steps to remedy the situation.
You are a welcome Member of this WTT Forum community.

I decided to close off the previous thread in order to avoid others from mistaking that WTT would "only complain" about the use of illegitimate software, and then "still continue" on with a fix. I acknowledge that I could have used different wording and allowed the thread to continue. I made the call and took the action. I apologize for any inconvenience or confusion that I may have caused to you.
__________

Actually you are welcome to simply continue about the HD situation here in this thread if you prefer.

And I still had a secondary problem of how to wire the drives so that the 40gb Seagate is recognized as the primary for the OS installation instead of the 15gb quantum. Jumper settings did not seem to be doing it.

Most "modern" machines have primary and secondary IDE channels that utilize the newer 80 conductor ribbon or cable.
Generally, these motherboards "prefer" to assign Master and Slave designation for Hard Drives based on the "position" that the HD is connected to the ribbon cable. The Master designation is the end of the ribbon cable, and the Slave designation is the middle connector on the ribbon cable. Both Hard Drives should have Jumpers set to CS (Cable Select) in this above instance.

Older machines that utilize the 40 wire ribbon were capable of using Cable Select, but sometimes required a hard Drive Jumper setting to designate Master vs Slave.

Please consider setting both Hard Drive Jumpers to CS (cable select) and give it a go.

Please also keep us posted with your progress.

Best Regards,
Doug

So very happy to have your reply. Thank you, Doug, on all counts. My ribbon is the 80 connector and I will give the positioning and jumper settings a go. Tomorrow. Here in Japan it is New Years Eve and the whole day is given to house cleaning - computers not included. so tomorrow is a good day for that. In case it works, i should simply format the drives again and install my new love, Ubuntu on the 40gb Eeagate then and just naturally turn the emptied quantum into a storage drive, yes? that's what I understand. I'll write again in a couple of days, but check back here to at least see if you write something concerning my understanding. Thank you.

Sounds like a good plan! Happy New Year. Doug