hi tony - youre legendary

but yes, i tried that, but will try again. right now the ibm is the master (no jumpers) and the fujitsu is the slave (one jumper in the rightmost position as listed on the drive label).

i did the opposite and tried the fujitsu as master - this actually worked (i only tried this one time) but the boot time took forever. it loaded the startup screen where it reads off its status like "loading playlists"..."loading visuals"... you know, that short bootup screen that only usually is there for like 2 secs - with the fujitsu as master, the bootup stopped at "building music database" or something like that, for like 15 seconds, before continuing. i figured it was something to do with the fujitsu being empty? but i didnt think too much about it. surely other users with 2 drives set up dont have to wait this long...? i did not sync with emplode after this to see if all 40gb were recognised. - i tried the ibm by itself, sometimes this works, sometimes not. i have not tried the fujitsu by itself.

i have been going on the assumption that the IDE cable works the same way as a normal PC one, ie, slave in the middle, master at the end. am i fundamentally wrong here? does it make a difference? the original drive was plugged into the middle connector... making it a slave? but it was a master cus it was the only one??

i will go over all this again tonite extensively and post my findings... its just a bit confusing and annoying that it hasnt been a simple task. the current fail rate (or, number of "No Hard Disk found" versus successful boot rate) is very very high. i can put up with it failing on every other cold morning, in fact if all i had to do every day was reboot it or pull power and replug it in, to get it to work, id be happy. but right now its basicallly unusable

oh, my other concern is possibly faulty IDE cable? visually it looks fine but of course it does, i guess. i am unsure how to test it (i dont have a laptop) or how to order a replacement? can i get another generic laptop one or should i get one from empeg/rio somehow?

thank you to you and anyone who can help - sorry to be long winded. on the plus side i just got a renewed 'warrant of fitness' for my car (road legal requirement here in NZ) even tho its turbocharged when it shouldnt be, so thats my happy side of today hassle-free boost for another 6 months! yay for slack dodgy mechanics!