Occasionally HD isn't recognized on cold boot

[silent tone]

I have a maxtor 40GB IDE drive that isn't always recognized by the BIOS on cold boots. Shutting down for a few seconds usually cures the problem. This has happened since I've had it. Is there anything I can do?

 

[copyfixer]

Try reseating the cable on both the hard drive and mb. Maybe try another cable.

 

[silent tone]

I'll try a new cable, but the other HD on that IDE channel never has a problem. I also recently upgraded the mobo, and it's the same as before.

 

[bruincal]

Sometimes failing drives will exhibit those problems. Have you tried using PowerMax from www.maxtor.com ? It creates a bootable floppy with diagnostic utlities. It will also read the SMART feature on the drive and tell you if the drive is failing and if everything is working properly. It can also detect improper or bad IDE cables.

 

[redbeard1]

I've seen older drives, in fast systems, not have enough time to get spun up properly before the bios makes it's call to the drives. Though I wouldn't call a 40 gig older. You might see if your bios has a choice for "pre delay" and give it 5 seconds, just to see if that might help it.

Also, do you have anything else on that IDE cable?

 

[GrimReepr]

Hey this is kinda good. I have the same problem so I know its just not me.

I have a 40gig and a 60gig both on the master ide cable, its an ata100 cable. The 40 gig is the older drive, being about a year older than the 60 though I can't place when I bought them. I used the suggester to get powermax, and sure enough the 40 shows a FAIL on the smart test.

What my computer does is like 10% of the time on a cold boot (especially in the morning after having a good 8-10hrs of downtime) the harddrives will hesitate to be recognized by the bios. The bios will sit there waiting, and most the time the hard drive or drives (i can't tell if its one or two of them taking their time) will spin up and be recognized. Sometimes the bios gets sick of waiting and only picks up the cdroms and has a boot fail, which I have to reboot again. When the drives do spin up or they have been running, they work flawlessly. I dont know what it is. I have a feeling the 40gig is dragging down the 60gig, cuz they are either both detected or both ignored.

To the original poster of this thread: Do you have both hard drives on the same channel? and if so does one get recognized sometime and not the other?

I am probably gonna do an advanced RMA through maxtor, as they will get me a new drive before I have to send this one out. I doubt its the cable, maybe the hard drive is just starting to die from the years of hard use. Let me know if anyone finds anything else out.

 

[tjaisv]

Originally posted by: istallion
I'll try a new cable, but the other HD on that IDE channel never has a problem. I also recently upgraded the mobo, and it's the same as before.

I'd also suggest putting your 2 hard drives on separate IDE channels.

 

[Wallysaurus]

I had a 40 G Maxtor that would do the same thing. I solved the problem originally by disabling the quick boot option in BIOS. Later I installed the drive in a Compaq PIII 550 in which the BIOS routines run much slower. I haven't had a problem with the drive since. (Almost a year now)

 

[Rav3n]

Make sure the jumpers are set to specifically say - Slave and Master, not just cable select. I have had some strange things happen with Cable select... But it sounds to me like the best of the suggestions have already been said!