Hard drive problems
I built this machine a few weeks ago and the the hard drive is bad, I got a new hard drive, exact same model and everything. The machine had been freezing up and becoming very un responsive prior to this repair. I brought the machine to my home for the repair and upon installing the new hard drive, the old hard drive becomes undetected in BIOS. Now, I know the first thing your going to ask, did I set the jumpers correctly. YES, the jumpers are set correctly but that is the thing. It does not matter where I install the old hard drive ( pri. master or slave sec. master or slave) It says uninstalled in BIOS but the funny thing is, with the old hard drive installed (IE as a master and the CD-ROM as a slave or vise-versa) then BIOS says uninstalled for both devices, if I unplug the old hard drive then BIOS reads the CD-ROM. No matter if it is set to no jumper, master, slave or even cable select. This hard drive booted into XP home just hours ago and now it is effecting everything attached to the same IDE cable. What is up with that???
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Steve McCarthy, MCSE, MCSA, MCP x8, Network+, i-Net+, A+, CIWA, CCNA, FDLE FCIC, HIPAA Security Officer
I have seen this before in a couple of ASUS motherboards. It was not the drive, but the system itself. What are the specs on your system, Motherboard, Processor, Ram??????
ASKER
MB is a Soyo KT600 Dragon plus V2.0, CPU is an Athlon XP2900+ with 512M DDR 3200 RAM
System is up and running again with the new HD (Maxtor 200G) with all drivers installed and running great, but the old hard drive still cannot be read by BIOS and causes the other drive to read as unistalled when I plug it back in.
Everything is running now but I still think that XP home loads too slow. Have to check some settings first.
System is up and running again with the new HD (Maxtor 200G) with all drivers installed and running great, but the old hard drive still cannot be read by BIOS and causes the other drive to read as unistalled when I plug it back in.
Everything is running now but I still think that XP home loads too slow. Have to check some settings first.
I have seen some issues with drives, namely Hitachi's with 2 in the system on a PATA RAID. I love the drives, but this was the only Querk. My other issue was with ASUS A7N8X Motherboards and Athlon 3200+ processors. I had unstable systems unless I lowered the speed from 200 to 166, making it work as a 2500+. I had over 8 of these, all worked the same.
To make sure you have the best performance, make sure your Bios is at the latest release and be sure to load the drivers from the Manufacturer on the CD that came with the motherboard.
To make sure you have the best performance, make sure your Bios is at the latest release and be sure to load the drivers from the Manufacturer on the CD that came with the motherboard.
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ASKER
Both hard drives are IDE, Both are Maxtor 200G 7200 8M ATA-133. The old hard drive was developing bad clusters and causing problems with programs loading mostly. The system is not overclocked, the CPU runs at 92 degrees and the power supply is a new Diablo 550W. I think the problem is the hard drive itself, is it possible that it completely failed? It does not matter how I set the jumpers, I have had everything unplugged with the old drive installed in every conceivable way and it does not register in BIOS at all. I will install the bad drive on another machine in the AM and see if it is read.
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it can be a bad ide cable too, swap it
Cavaman do you mean 92F if it is celsius then its a real big problem.
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You can try to force parameters of the HD in the bios instead to set the bios to autodetect.
Sometimes it works for drive that are not discovered by the bios.
As you say the HD had some problems, go fast to copy data when up.
As last trial : put the HD in the freezer for at least one or two hour. Connect it (with manual settings in bios) Boot and go fast to copy data. I do that sometimes and once on two it is working but go fast and wait if too much cold, the drive will heat up to minimum proper temp and work for some minutes.
Sometimes it works for drive that are not discovered by the bios.
As you say the HD had some problems, go fast to copy data when up.
As last trial : put the HD in the freezer for at least one or two hour. Connect it (with manual settings in bios) Boot and go fast to copy data. I do that sometimes and once on two it is working but go fast and wait if too much cold, the drive will heat up to minimum proper temp and work for some minutes.
ASKER
my bad, 92 degrees farenheit. I have tried the drive as master and slave on different cables on both controllers, tried it jumpered as master, slave, CS and with no jumper. I also have already installed the latest drivers as well as BIOS so everything is up to date there. I did not put any partition on the new drive this time, you think that is a sluggish prob? I could reformat and partition it but I thought NTFS was the better choice?
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yeah, I know but to clear things up, I have an identical drive in the system now that is up and running. It has a problem loading windows, it takes way too long for a system with a 97% free hard drive so my question on partitions is directed to the new drive Perhaps I should start a new question with more points?? yeah...good idea
Definitely try a different IDE cable.
However ....
That drive is over 137 gigabytes and requires 48 bit LBA addressing in both the BIOS and the operating system, as well as the ability to support this on the motherboard IDE ports (hardware). Are you sure that you can support this drive? Even Windows XP with service pack 1 doesn't AUTOMATICALLY support drives over 137 gigabytes (you have to make a registry entry).
However ....
That drive is over 137 gigabytes and requires 48 bit LBA addressing in both the BIOS and the operating system, as well as the ability to support this on the motherboard IDE ports (hardware). Are you sure that you can support this drive? Even Windows XP with service pack 1 doesn't AUTOMATICALLY support drives over 137 gigabytes (you have to make a registry entry).
ASKER
yes it supports this drive. And I have tried a different IDE cable. I believe the drive is completely dead
NTFS on a larger partition cud cause problems due to BIOS and Hard Disk mismatch. Have u updated the BIOS yet?? ALso once ur thru with the BIOS update then try and reload windows on a FAT32 partition not larger than 32 GB. Leave the rest of the space un partitioned for now and see if that makes a differeence.
Dan
Dan
Now before to throw your old drive why not to put it in freezer like i suggest before. Sometimes it works. If the bios recognize the drive, go fast and copy data.