Hard Drive Problems

[CMar]

First here is my setup:

Primary Master: WD 40GB, C (system) and D (Files) partitions
Primary Slave: FAILING Seagate 10GB, H (system backup)
Secondary Master: WD 120GB, E (Big Files), I (Photoshop scratch)
Secondary Slave: CDRW

Ok now the problem.

My Seagate is going out on me. It sometimes clicks and spits and sounds like Chewbacca. When this happens the system freezes, and I get a blue screen with ?Kernal_stack_inpage_error?.. Beginning dump of physical memory?

If I try to disconnect the IDE cable and power from this drive, my system will not boot. It takes about 30 seconds for the bios to recognize the remaining drives, then I get the post screen and it says ?verifying dmi pool data?, then moves on to boot from CD.

If I try to inspect the drives from a startup disk, the WD 40BG is not recognized, and if I insert my Windows2000 disk and try to repair, it does not recognize a system disk or current OS instillation.

Well that?s all I know, if you have any suggestions as to what is up or what I need to do, it would be appreciated.

 

[FlyingPenguin]

Your Primary Master is a Western Digital and WD drives are peculiar in that they have TWO SEPERATE jumper settings for Master: "Single Master" and "Master with Slave".

When you disconnected the slave, BIOS didn't see the Pri master because it was jumpered incorrectly. You need to either jumper it as a "Single Master" or, better yet, jumper is as "CS". If you jumper it CS then BIOS automatically detects the drive and assigns it Master/Slave based on the connector it's using on the ribbon. If you leave it as CS you can add and remove the Pri Slave without worrying about re-jumpering the Pri Master (you should jumper the slave as CS as well).

All modern mobos support - and most prefer - the CS setting.

Hope this helps...

 

[CMar]

Wow, I feel like an idiot , I didn't even think to check the jumper settings.
As it turns out, the system drive was the only one not installed by me, and was set as Master with Slave.

Its now set to CS and all is well!!!

Thanks for the quick reply, FlyingPenguin.