1 Rookie
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21 Posts
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73
March 8th, 2026 15:15
I bought a new IDE HDD and it's not being recognized in Dell Dimension 4100
I bought this new IDE Hard Drive from Amazon: (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B016ZNLXXI?ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_fed_asin_title) I bought it so I could install Windows 98 on it without the hard drive possibly failing soon because it's like 25 years old.
And I got a new DVD SuperDrive for it too (which is recognized and does work) and so I would connect the IDE cable and molex connector and no matter if I just connect this one HDD to the PC or even the older HDD that has Windows XP on it, the computer won't even recognize it on windows or in the BIOS.
No matter if the jumper is on the master or slave pins it's not recognized at all.
All I got was if the new HDD was put in slave mode and the old Windows HDD was still in Master, the new HDD would spin up.
What should I do?
ejn63
10 Elder
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30.8K Posts
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March 8th, 2026 15:19
Truly new IDE hard drives were last made in 2011, so it's at least 15 years old regardless of when you bought it, and a 40G drive is likely even older than that. If the drive isn't recognized, have the seller replace it.
redxps630
9 Legend
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15.5K Posts
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March 8th, 2026 15:35
4100 board has two ide sockets primary n secondary. Try connect only old hdd to either socket and make sure pc can boot from old XP hdd connected to both socket. If yes remove old hdd and connect new ide hdd to same socket and enter bios to detect it. New hdd jumper should be set at master. If no joy then replace new hdd
(edited)
Nirby UYP
1 Rookie
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21 Posts
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March 8th, 2026 16:35
@redxps630 The old HDD was recognized and with the same IDE and molex cables the new HDD wasn't recognized on master or slave.
Would it be better to find another IDE HDD from somewhere else or to just buy a SATA to IDE Adapter and use a brand new SATA HDD?
bradthetechnut
7 Technologist
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9.4K Posts
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March 8th, 2026 22:05
That's not a bad idea. However, the new SATA HDD needs to be initialized. Typically for SATA systems, the drive is initialized with GPT system and NTFS file scheme. For an IDE system, you might have to initialize it to MBR and FAT32.
I doubt Win98 can initialize an HDD. Would have to do it on a Win7 or newer PC.
@redxps630 @ejn63 Am I right? I don't get this just everyday.
redxps630
9 Legend
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15.5K Posts
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March 9th, 2026 01:45
I have a number of working ide hdd and in my experience I have seen more dead sata hdd than ide. Age alone is not risk factor for bad hdd.
test w another ide hdd is good idea at this point. for Win 98 you only need a small size hdd. I recently installed 98 on a gateway desktop.
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redxps630
9 Legend
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15.5K Posts
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March 9th, 2026 01:48
Re:Typically for SATA systems, the drive is initialized with GPT system and NTFS file scheme. For an IDE system, you might have to initialize it to MBR and FAT32.
I doubt Win98 can initialize an HDD
You can boot from Win 98 dvd and use FDISK to delete old partition on hdd then create new primary partition, followed by format (in F32). I used to do this for Win 95 install 30 years ago
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bradthetechnut
7 Technologist
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9.4K Posts
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March 9th, 2026 03:19
Formatting or reformatting HDD wipes it. But on a PC that doesn't have Win7 or newer to reformat an HDD, then use FDISK as redxps mentioned.
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