Major Hardware errors, IDE drives not detected/failure

[rushh]

My computer has worked flawlessly for 3 months, and it started acting up this past few days. It started when one of my harddrives became "unformatted" and a machine check exception BSOD would randomly occur. I took out the failed drive and reformated my system drive with a clean winxp. it didnt fix the BSODs..

Now, ANOTHER one of hard drives became unformatted, and the "machine check exception" blue screens still showed. As of latest, at boot, the IDE channels dont get reconized at all(system drive is on sata so im able to get into windows still). I really dont know whats going on? is the motherboard at fault here? What would cause my harddrives to crap out like that.

Asus A8N Premium
AMD X2 4400+

As ive said, its worked without any problems for months..its frustrating to lose data on 2 hard drives. Any suggestions on how to test where the problem is? thanks

 

[imported_goku]

Alright, first thing you need to do is run memtest 86 on the machine,if it shows errors, then you know your problem. If not, proceed to getting a perfectly clean drive that *you know works* and install it into the machine. Install an operating system, see if it gets corrupt. If when you attempt to install the OS, it gets corrupted/refuses to install with a disc *you know* works, then what you need to do is get a different set of ata cables, does this solve your problem when attempting the OS install? no? Then it's likely your board, if it does, it's your cables. I'm telling you not to replace the cables first because your drives may be corrupt already.

Report back.