Weird Hard Drive issue

[DeadSeaSquirrels]

I have two hard drives on my win98 system. I know a little flaky, and i think a couple of the molex heads are a little stretched out. This is my issue. My OS only recognizes one of the HD's, and I can't understand why. My Bios recognizes both (they are both on the first IDE channel). And the weird thing is, sometimes the OS sees it, and sometimes it doesn't. Well it is more like, the OS has seen it before, and now it won't. So I don't think it is some software configuration thing.

The only thing I can think of which can relate the PS back to it, is that somehow the PS isn't supplying the hard drive with enough steady current and a stable voltage, and maybe during the bootup phase that is alright, but when it is running on the OS it won't show. What do you guys think about that?

 

[stultus]

What type of PSU are you running?

Also, are you not seeing the same HD repeatedly, or does it randomly alternate?

 

[DeadSeaSquirrels]

Well I would say it somewhat alternates. The primary drive is doing alright. But the secondary drive is very very flaky. But the primary drive goes every once in a while too, which is why I think it is the PSU. As for the brand, I think it is a "powermax" or "powerman." But hear this. I also have a IBM 75GXP (40GB) drive that is totally flaky on that machine also. But I know this IBM drive is flaky, I put it in my primary system (one that isn't flaky at all), and the IBM drive doesn't show up. I have onboard RAID on this machine, so I thought maybe i have to go into the RAID configuration or something to make it recognize the drive. But that is not the case, because even if I put the IDE drive on the RAID slots, it should still be a normal IDE drive. But I go into the RAID setup anyway, and see what's up. Well, even though it didn't do anything, it made the drive be recognize.

So I guess that whole IBM story is just I know this IBM drive is flaky, but it works at least sometimes, and when I put it on the "flaky PSU" machine, it totally doesn't work. The thing is, I'm not even running that many things on it. Only 2 hard drives, and 1 CD-ROM.

Now I totally can't get it to recognize the secondary hard drive...I tried all the molex plugs.