POST takes a long time to detect IDE drives (optic drives)

[mauiblue]

Aloha to all. About a month ago I installed a couple new Seagate drives (500 GB) in my system (see my sig line). Both drives are mirrored and are my primary boot drives. I got Win XP Pro installed and all was running well for about a week with no issues. Last night I started my system and noticed as it was booting up, during POST it took up to 5 minutes for the BIOS to detect my IDE drives (DVD drives). After the IDE drives were detected the computer would finally boot to Windows. I've changed the cable recently to make sure that wasn't the issue and everything else is the same since I installed the new hard drives. This system is at least 5 years old now and never gave me any issues other than the drives crapping out. I have already updated the BIOS. Soyo is pretty much out of the MOBO business so if I can't get this system to keep going, I'm SOL for a while until I can get the funds up to upgrade. Any helpful suggestions or insight would really be appreciated. Mahalo for looking!

 

[mauiblue]

I've been doing some research on the Internet and finding that maybe the PSU may not be providing enough power that's why it hangs quite a while during POST when trying to detect the IDE drives. I wonder if because I installed larger hard drives they maybe drawing more power than my previous WD Raptor drives? In any case I'll check on the voltage draw. I'm also wondering if the IDE controller on the MOBO is giving up the ghost? If that is the case, I guess I have to save the green stamps sooner to upgrade:frown:.

 

[mpilchfamily]

There may be an issue with your IDE controler on the motherboard. You may want to try clearing the CMOS to make sure the settings aren't currupt.

If it is a power issue then you where hanging on the endge to start with. a pair of HDDs will pull about 3A on teh 12V rails at most. If 3A where all that was standing between the system fuctioning and not then the PSU should have been upgraded long ago.

 

[Rottie]

I am not a tech savvy but I can only think you might set both hard drive and dvd drive as master with same cable into IDE connector...Try look in the back of hard drive to make sure it is set to master and dvd drive as slave it should be OK. Sometime Seagate set new hard drive as slave instead of master.

 

[mauiblue]

I appreciate the replies to my thread. I forgot to mention that I did reset the CMOS and replaced the coin battery on the MOBO last night and still no luck. I'll check the MOBO voltages tonight and see how much draw is occuring.

I was thinking about my BIOS settings and thought maybe I've got something set wrong. A computer guy I know locally mentioned that today to me. I'll check on that also.

I was so fortunate that I didn't have any problems with this system for quite a while. I didn't think just replacing hard drives would turn into so much of an issue. But then again I know just enough about computers to get me in trouble quite easily. Thanks again.

 

[Matt1970]

Most times windows will pick up the drives even if CMOS doesn't see them, so try setting the drives to "None" and see how your boot goes.

 

[mauiblue]

I checked on my BIOS settings and changed the chipset setup to SATA only. I rebooted the computer and it only took less than a minute to boot to Windows. Yeah! Looks like I inadvertantly changed the CMOS setup when I was setting up the RAID array in the BIOS. Oops! Live and learn.

 

[mauiblue]

Update:

Changing the settings in the BIOS helped with a faster booting time but now the mirrored RAID is broken. If I go and return the BIOS to my original settings (and slower boot time) the RAID 1 is back but I'm not able to boot to Windows.

I guess I'll leave it be for now and work on another issue that is happening with my floppy disk drive:disgust:.