WD 120gig (2mb cache) wont work on Epox 8RDA

[dmw16]

this is a repost from general hardware, but I thought it might get better exposure here:
I had my PSU go out about a month back. So I initially I replaced my psu and mobo - I say initially because it later turned out that my video card got partially damaged (3d stopped working). So I got my new parts and put my computer together again. I have two 120gig western digital hard drives. One with the 2mb cache and the other with the 8mb cache. I initially just plugged in the 8mb cache drive to install XP since I didnt want it to give my drives funky lettering and that seems to happen sometimes during reinstalls with multiple drives. Anyhow, I installed my OS and did all that stuff. Installed all drivers etc. Then I hooked up my 2mb cache drive and nothing. The BIOS got to the IDE detection thing and stopped - waited about 2 minutes and either did nothing or decided no drives were present and tried to boot and found no boot record. At the time I had two hard drives and 2 rom drives and it is telling me there were no drives. So I thought it could be a power issue (I have a 300W Enermax PSU). First I checked jumpers and tried all the arangements I could and nothing. So I unhooked everything but the suspect drive and tried again. Still nothing. I thought it might be the board. So I took out my old 20gig IBM drive and it worked fine w/ or w/o the 8mb cache drive hooked up. So that eliminates IDE controller issues or it being a bad cable. So now Im ticked because all my data is on the 2mb drive. So i decided to hook it up to my old computer (Asus A7V) w/ XP. Everything works fine. I can access my data and everything - no problems. So I contacted WD and Epox and they both told me the same thing. "Check your jumpers." I said I did. They said "It is probably a bad cable." I told them I explored that too. They sent back some crap about running a diag on the drive, but the drive works fine everywhere but on my new board. Also, as a side note, my previous board (the dead one) was an epox as well and the drive worked fine. What could be wrong? My drive is still under warrenty and I have my data so I could RMA it, but I don't feel like paying shipping costs if I am just going to get back a drive that works everywhere but where I need it. If i knew it was incompatible I could move on, but I dont know what is going on. Please help.
thanks,
-doug

 

[DAPUNISHER]

There is a known problem with some WD HDDs and NF2 and the fix is to cut the first 2 wires (red stripped=reset and one next to it=ground) on the IDE cable or notify WD that you have the exact issue and tell them you want a moddified cable and they'll send one free of charge if you don't want to mess with 1 of your own.

 

[dmw16]

I became aware of that issue and included it in one of my reponses to western digital. I was told that it only effected older WD drives (namely some 40gig model) and that the issue no longer exists and that isnt what is causing my problem. I wish that was the problem tho. Any other ideas?
thanks,
-doug

 

[dmw16]

bump

 

[NesuD]

did you actually try modifying a cable to see if in fact that is not the problem? What you describe is exactly what my WD 600BB rtl did with my K7N2-L. cutting the resetwire(the red one) and it's accompanying ground as described by DaPunisher is the only known fix for it. I have seen reports of some 80 gig wds having this issue though the majority were 60 and 40 gig drives. As best as i could determine the drives affected were manufactured from late summer of 2001 to some reported as late as june 2002. modify a cable just for the heck of it if you haven't yet and see.

 

[lobadobadingdong]

it's a possibility that your mobo has a flakey ide controller, and not the hdd if it works fine on other systems. or maybe you just need to flash the bios to the latest version for the fix for that issue.