Hard Drive help needed

[imported_SpiderJohn]

First, a little background info.

My computer is an off the shelf HP that is about 3 years old. (I am in the process of shopping to build a new one.) In the mean time, about 1 month ago, I tried to boot up and got the dreaded "Operating System not found" message.

This has happened to me on other computers and I assumed a HD failure. At the time, I was running a 40gb hd with operating system and other programs and a Maxtor 60gb for storage and photography programs.

Luckily, I had a spare 20gb HD, so, I replaced the "bad" hd with the 20gb, formatted and loaded my OS onto the 20 gig drive. System worked great! Went to work on some photos.....no 60gig drive listed in my computer (this was working before.)

Figured I must have pulled a cable loose while replacing the other drive, sure enough, my ribbon cable was unplugged. Plugged it in, powered up and get a message that windows had determined that a drive failure was imminent, back up all data. System would not boot any further.

Unplug the 60 gig drive, system works fine (although with much less hd space than I want).

I have tried playing with the jumper on the hd but got nowhere.

Anyone have any thoughts or suggestions?

Thought of buying a new hd that I will use in the new system; however, if my current box is screwing up my hard drives, I don't want to take that chance.

sj

 

[stockjock]

Not sure of the brand of your 60gb drive, but most companies that manufacture drives have some type of diagnostic software that can be downloaded...you might want to try that....just an idea

 

[FlyingPenguin]

Yes definately go to the HDD manufacturer's website and download their diagnostic. Run the full (Advanced) diagnostic or the "Burn-in" (if they have that option). If it passes then the drive is factory certified.

 

[imported_SpiderJohn]

The problem is that my system won't boot with the second hard drive installed.

sj

 

[Blazer]

run the diag on one drive at a time from the boot disk created.

prob may also be that windows see two OS and does not know which drive to attempt a boot from and delays boot,as dual boot has not been loaded!

 

[CrispyFried]

It sounds like the jumpers are misconfigured. Did you try setting both drives to Cable Select (that needs to be set on both drives)? HPs usually use that setting.

I doubt that the mobo will screw up the drives, especially it it is working with teh 20 gig OK.