Unusual Hard Drive Behavior -- Any ideas?

[Wiloden]

The other day, I went AFK for awhile, and when I returned, I had a blue screen saying that the system could not access drive D: (harddrive). Additionally, I did not hear the all-too-familiar hum of this drive, which made me think it had died.

So, being the careful troubleshooter that I am, I turned the computer off, and made sure that all of the cables were tightened securely. I turned the machine back on, and the drive woke up, power and all.

With that in mind, I had a similiar problem at bootup last night. The BIOS did not detect my C: drive, and obviously would not boot. Again, I pulled the cover off, tightened the drive cables to that drive, and tried it again.

Lo and behold, it worked.

What's going on here? Neither drive is brand new, but my cables are only a few months old. Plus, I rarely hear of cables failing.

Setup:

AMD 1.1Ghz Athlon
Gigabyte Mobo
256MB RAM
SB-Live Value
Iomega SCSI Adapter + Jazz Drive
Hercules Prophet II MX Video

Any help will be mucho appreciated.

 

[devoed]

I had this happen last weekend.......I was having a really weird issue on a clients machine....same as what you have stated....Real odd drive issues......I would open the case reseat the cable power it back up with no problem....several times the Video was blank at Boot as well.....after troubleshooting and troubleshooting I actually found that it was a bad Mix of Ram.....Each would work Seperately with no problem....But when both in ....it would fail.....

I see that you Listed 250 MB of Ram is this correct?

This might at least be a start...
Good Luck
Devoed

 

[Wiloden]

Oh darn...

I meant to say:

256 MB RAM.

Not enough coffee..

Thanks for the quick resposne.

Any more takers now that I've got my head outta the sand? =P

 

[BadThad]

If you run into this, DON'T just make sure the cable is tight. Pull the cable COMPLETELY off and re-insert it. Believe it or not, IDE cables can work themselves loose. It's bizzare, but it happens. I've repaired many a PC by reseating the cables.

OH - Are you a member of TeAm AnandTech?

 

[Wiloden]

Good idea. This afternoon, I will completely remove both cables from the mobo and the drives and reseat them.

I believe my "Member" status has to do with my number of posts. But, I am not an official member of Team Anandtech.

Thanks!

 

[Techwhore]

Amazingly enough, this happen to me this past weekend as well

<theme from twilight zone playz>

I was fixing my housemates machine and whenever I powered on, the BIOS wouldn't detect the drives, I checked the cables and of course they were all ok. Turns out that every time you do a cold boot the BIOS won't detect the drives, but simply hitting reset at POST and going into the BIOS will fix it. As soon as it says entering Setup, the drives get detected... weirdest problem i've come across. The CMOS battery is fine too.

Just thought I'd add to the mystery...

 

[Wiloden]

Heh, did this happen to anyone else?

*evil grin*

 

[MortimRex]

There have been some issues with the 1GH Athlon and VIa Chipsets not detecting the drives on Boot-up. I think they are working on the problems with a bios fix. I had the same problem and I turned on the part in the bios where it says to search for floppy drives. Since I've done that, I haven';t had a problem. I think it's the boot speed. By turning on the boot up floppy seek, it slowed down the boot process and it worked OK.

Just my $.02