Sporadic Non-Booting Problem

[TBaz]

This is a strange one...

I have two identical Seagate 160Gig hard disks. Connected on the primary 80 pin IDE cable and set to master and slave via the jumpers. Each one is partitioned identically - a 40Gig FAT32 partition and the remainder of the drive NTFS.

99 times out of 100, the system boots int XP Pro with no problems whatsoever.

However, once in a while the red IDE LED lights up permanently and the BIOS says there are no drives attached to the system. Once this happens, no amount of powering down and restarting will rectify the problem.

However if I disconnect either one of the drives and re-boot, the other one appears. I can then power down, reconnect the other drive and everything is back to normal.

Over the months I've tried everything, including fitting new IDE cables, new 400W PSU, swapping the drives over so the other one is C: and installed XP on that one, updated mobo BIOS - all of which haven't stopped the problem.

(According to an on-line PSU calculator, my system isn't underpowered with a 400W PSU).

Both drives show no faults with error-checking software and both work faultlessly when in the machine on their own as do they with a *different* HD as primary slave, so I can only think that there's some compatibility problem when they are both connected together.

Can anyone confirm the possibility of this being true or suggest a remedy please?

Thanks...

Baz


System Specs:

Asus K8V SE Deluxe
Athlon XP64 3200+
1.5Gig Kingston DDR
2 x Seagate ST3160021A HD (160G)
Chaintech nVidia FX 5900 XT
LG CD Writer
LG DVD Writer
SB Audigy Player

 

[Billb2]

Originally posted by: TBaz
This is a strange one...

However if I disconnect either one of the drives and re-boot, the other one appears. I can then power down, reconnect the other drive and everything is back to normal. "
A little more info please...Is it always the boot drive that is not recognized? Which IDE chanels (and primary or secondary) are the drives connected to? Are the jumpers set to match the connections?

 

[amdskip]

What brand of power supply are you using?

 

[TBaz]

amdskip:

It just has the logo DS on the label and is model number MPT-500. An error on my part in my first post was saying that it was a 400W PSU when I had swapped it for a new 500W PSU the last time it happened.

Billb2:

All your questions are covered in my initial post...

"Is it always the boot drive that is not recognized?"

Quote: the BIOS says there are no drives attached to the system

"Which IDE chanels (and primary or secondary) are the drives connected to? Are the jumpers set to match the connections?"

Quote: Connected on the primary 80 pin IDE cable and set to master and slave via the jumpers

To clarify: When switching drive configurations and changing the jumpers, the master and slave drives are always connected correctly to the master and slave connectors on the IDE ribbon cable.

Thanks to both of you for the input.

TBaz

 

[Billb2]

That IS strange!
The only thing I can think of to tell you is to try just wiggling the connectors one at a time (instead of disconnecting) and rebooting. Perhaps it's a bad connector on the MOBO or a HDD.