Has my primary IDE Connector Died? My HDD cannot be located! Urgent please!

[magomago]

Last night I was happy because I had gotten my divxs to play on the stv out in Redhat Linux 9.0 and I really enjoyed that.

But I resratrted to go back to the internet because for some reason I cannot access my modem though linux (well...yet)

Now here is the problem:

I resrate and the machine posts but it doesn't recognzie the primary ide channel and its killing me. I have my 80gig WD SE and my 48x liton on that and I'm not sure what to do.

I unplugged it all and regplugged and nothing happens (though i recognzies my 16xliteon DVD on thes econdary channel)

I tried a different IDE cable and nothing happend - wouldn't even recgonize the burner!

I disconnected all drives, too off the jumper on the WD so it would think its a single drive with no slave and it STILL wouldn't see the HDD.

When the cpu loads it normally shows "Detecthing IDE Devices" and then it lists them, but it won't show my WD or my burner (haven't seen if the burner will work on the secondary IDE channel as this wasy midnight and I had school)

I didn't do anything beyond watch a anime episode on linux and the shutdown was successful without error.

Does anyone have an idea on what to do and I would REALLY love to know what is going on.

Is it my mobo (wow. that'll be my second RMA since the first was defective a few months ago) or is it the HDD?

Please say mobo Because I haven't backed up the HDD

 

[magomago]

I finally got yhonme and tested a few things

a) my old 4.3WD HD would not be recognzied in the primary IDE cable regardless of the three cables I use (and one was brand new that my uncle let me borrow his his just bought 60gig hd so i can test to see what is at fault)

if i l\hook up my burner to the secondary ide cable it works...


Help I'm posting \from my 500mhz machine and its not that it is slow (its pklenty fast for the net)

but the problem is that I had an 80 gig because I USED that 80 gigs (in the form of fansubs) and that data is so important...

does it look like all the sudden my primary ide channel just died or what!@

 

[Viper96720]

So you tried the hd on the secondary cable? If the burner works on secondary then the drive should also.

 

[magomago]

Originally posted by: Viper96720
So you tried the hd on the secondary cable? If the burner works on secondary then the drive should also.

BRB

 

[magomago]

OMG I love you! On the secondary channel the hdd DOES boot it and it goes to the very secksy redhat9 grub bootloader!

If I were a woman I'd ask to have your baby <--- that is how much gratitude I have



So is it a dead Primary IDE conector on the mobo? How the hell can something like that happen!

 

[chizow]

looks like you've made progress. I have read of some weird issues with WDs and BIOS detection issues, although I'm not sure if it is restricted to nForce2 boards or not. There were a bunch of suggestions made regarding jumpers and what not, but I'm not really familiar on what the cause or fix was. Its possible the primary channel could be dead; try resetting the CMOS and see if it detects anything on the primary channel. If possible keep the WD on the secondary channel (it doesn't effect performance or boot sequence) if it works there, and shift your other drives to the primary channel if you can get them working on the primary.

Chiz

 

[magomago]

wouldn't those quirks appear early on? I'm talking flawless preformance since I got my RMA of my board back in January and now BAM it doesn't work....and this isn't turning on the PC. this is restarting Linux so i can bootup into windows!


I do have a 20 gig Maxtor that I'm going to try though right now because I'm assuming if the Maxtor (and I'll try my uncle's 60 gig maxtor) works then I can count out bios quirks?

brb and thanks Chiz for the speedy response - u=teh cool

 

[magomago]

Ok this is weird.


I plugged the 60 gig MAxtor into what I thought was the SEcondary master...turns out it was the slave...

so then for the hell of it i plug in my hdd and lo and behold its working...

exact same plugs i'm using...exact same drive stupid save for the fact my WD has no jump on it anymore

thanks