primary IDE troubles

[imported_prae]

WOOHOO First post for me! I hope someone can shed some light on a rather frustrating problem I have been having.
specs.
asus p4pe-x mobo
p4 2.6 mhz

Within the past few days perhaps 2 weeks my box will slow to a grinding halt (2 mins for IE to open).
I shut down and on reboot there is no primary master or slave only secondary. I unplug the 2 IDE cables and plug them back in and it works for a while, a couple of days or a couple of hours. This has become a ritual of turning off unpluging and repluging.

Bad mobo??? or ide controller?
Thank you in advance to anyone who responds to this.

 

[meltdown75]

Hmm. I'd say bad hard drive, or at least it is exhibiting signs of going south. If there is one drive on the channel that is bad / degrading, it can take the other drive out as well - neither will show up @ post. If you have 2 drives on the channel, I suggest unhooking one of them and seeing if the symptoms persist.

Other than that, you might want to boot into DOS using a boot disk and run a "chkdsk c: /f" (c: being the drive acting strange). I've seen many a drive show this behaviour, and it's never good. Personally I would probably buy a new drive while you still have time to salvage your old data. good luck

 

[LTC8K6]

I would download and run the drive's diagnostic tools from the mfgs site.

 

[imported_prae]

Ran the diags from Western Dig. NO errors. I'm confused as to why unplugging the cable from the mobo would fix it. Is a signal present that the HD can sense? I don't touch the HD. ANyway thanks for the input. I will keep soing the old process of elimination thing.

 

[LTC8K6]

Have you tried a new cable?

 

[imported_prae]

yes that is how i came up with the unplug and replug to the mobo. i was thinking it was the mobo or the ide controller or even the connector on the mobo.

 

[imported_prae]

Well nothing for the past week. THanks again to you both for your input.

 

[montag451]

can you try putting different ide devices on, just for a tryout?

for instance, move your cd around [don't forget the jumpers], try a spare hdd on the secondary etc etc.
see if the problem is replicated -

is your cmos battery going flat?
are you losing a small amount of time in your system clock each day?

 

[imported_prae]

Well it finally happened. Unplung and replug didnt work. It looks like my slave hd was the culprit. It won;t work on either cable now. THanks for the help. Maybe I could coax it into working, by hitting it with a hammer, only long enough to transfer all my mp3's over? Well maybe not... Looks like I'll be burning up the bandwidth with limewire for the next week or two.

 

[montag451]

if you are looking to get the drive working again, - for a short time -
then FREEZE the drive in an airtight plastic bag in your freezer overnite.

Disconnect all drives in your system apart from your boot hdd.
take cold drive out, and plug it into system on secondary channel as master.

as soon as you boot up, copy what you can. IF this technique does work for you, it will only be for a few minutes at most.
Good luck