WD 40gig and Abit Motherboard

[Frontrunner]

:| I am having some serious problems. I just got my new Western Digital 40 gig 7200 rpm hard drive from Best Buy today since my Quantum quit on me. Well I have an Abit KT7A-Raid motherboard and when I plugged it in and all booted up and it doesnt detect it. I have tried so many things yet all my computer will detect is my cd-rom and when I put my partially working Quantum in. It doesnt want to detect my 2 toher hard drives. Seagate and another Western digital. They are old. 1.6 giggers but still the motherboard only want to detect my Quantum, like its imune to it or in love with it. Please. need some help! Thanks

 

[Frontrunner]

Now you tell me. When I got this board it was one of the best on the market, Should have bought an MSI? Still needing help because my problem is still not fixed.

 

[skypilot]

great advice orcish.... hope my sarcasm wasnt really obvious there ;-)

I would try the WD in another person's computer and see if it detects fine.... If it does, I would update the BIOS on the abit board and see what that accomplishes. Also, play with the master/slave jumpers on the drive and make sure they are set correctly. Last but not least, make sure all connectors are plugged in the right way, with pin 1 on the cable corresponding to pin 1 on the drive and mobo. Sounds dumb, but I've made that mistake more than once.

Mike (skypilot)

 

[Frontrunner]

I have messed with the jumpers and have messed with the cables. Is it possible to flash my BIOS without a detected hard drive or a OS?

 

[skypilot]

yes. Download the bios and flasher program onto a boot disk.... then run the flash utility from the disk after you boot to it.

 

[Frontrunner]

!st time using the Flash Utility but Ill give it a try.

 

[skypilot]

let us know how it goes...

 

[Frontrunner]

What does the computer term "Inflating" mean?

 

[skypilot]

i think extracting files from a compressed format (ZIP, etc) is sometimes referred to as inflating.

 

[Frontrunner]

That sounds about right. Damn you are full of knowlage

 

[skypilot]

dunno bout that

 

[espressokid]

i saw the exact same problem with a new wd drive (100gig). i also have an abit kt7a board. contacted wd and it turns out its a problem with bios and wd firmware. they still don't have it solved but have a temporary workaround - a modded ata100 cable (a section of wires to pin1 and pin2 is removed). i thought this was only on the 100/120 gig models, but apparently not. here is a link to wd's site with a detailed thread on the topic:

wd thread

hope this helps. cheers.

espressokid