IDE drives not registering

[RusH487]

I recently built a new computer and all is well and working fine with that. However, in the process of building it, in an attempt to get a Serial ATA hard drive to work, I connected one of my old IDE hard drives from my old computer as well. I have since disconnected the old hard drive from my new computer and reconnected it to its proper tower. Figuring all was well and nothing had changed, I plugged in my old computer to a spare monitor/keyboard/mouse I had lying around in an effort to get it up and running again. However, now that I have successfully hooked everything up, when I turn it on, the only drive that is registering is the floppy drive. None of my IDE drives are working. I've checked all the connections, all the cables are correctly positioned. I also replaced one of the IDE cables, thinking it may have been dammaged in the process. No luck. I tried resetting the motherboard by taking the battery out. Again, no luck. Any suggestions would be helpful... I'm hoping my motherboard's not shot, though I can't imagine anything could have happened to it to have done so, being as it hasn't been plugged in lately.

The motherboard type is a Gigabyte GA-7DXE.

 

[mechBgon]

So neither the hard drive nor the optical drive is working in the old system now? Could it be that both drives are on one cable and they're both jumpered as Master, or both as Slave? That would cause a conflict. Also check that the drive's power cable is firmly seated.

 

[RusH487]

The power cables are sealed... the hard drive power lights are on... I just gave up on the optical drives, figuring it'd be fewer wires to screw around with. I haven't changed the jumper settings since I last was able to get the computer running fine, but I'll see what happens when I just connect one hard drive instead of two.

Update:I've since disconnected everything but the floppy drive and one of the hard drives. It still won't boot no matter what hard drive I attach to the IDE cable.

 

[RusH487]

Do you think my motherboard might be somehow fried? Is it typical for IDE slots to go bad? My floppy's still working...

 

[mechBgon]

Have you confirmed that your IDE cables are plugged in the right way 'round at both ends? The red stripe at the edge is Wire #1 and there are corresponding Pin #1's on the motherboard and each drive. Make sure they match up.

Also, recognizing drives is different from booting up. If the BIOS recognizes your hard drive, but won't boot Windows from it, maybe your Windows needs a reinstallation. If the BIOS doesn't recognize the drive, then that's a more fundamental issue. Let me know which situation is happening here.

 

[RusH487]

The cables and drives are notched so I wouldn't be able to turn them upside down (easily at any rate). And BIOS isn't recognizing the drives, it's not just that Windows won't boot up. The boot disk works fine and all, but even when I tried running FDISK it still told me it couldn't see any hard drives installed to run FDISK on.

 

[mechBgon]

Go through the BIOS and have it try to re-detect the drives on each position (Primary Master, Primary Slave, Secondary Master, Secondary Slave).

 

[JonB]

Look in the BIOS for a setting to "Reset Configuration Data" and enable it. Then save settings and reboot.
It always sets itself back to "Disabled" after your reboot, but it will dump any bad stored settings and has helped me before. I always thought a BIOS reset did the same thing, but experience has indicated differently.