Western Digital 80JB problem

[archaeopterix]

I have a western digital 80JB and I have a problem when I install this drive as master or stand-alone. The drive is recognised fine from bios and it is completly readable. But windowsXP cannot boot if this drive is present at some ide channel (as master). They stop at the welcome screen and the ide led of the board is constantly on.
The installation of XP stops after the 'Inspecting your system....' with the ide led on.
All these problems go away if this drive is installed as slave.
I am 100% sure that the jumpers are ok and I have tested it to many pcs - everywhere the same behaviour.
Is this a known problem?

 

[buleyb]

are there other devices on that channel?


I have 2 of those drives, one in a box where it sits as stand-alone on the first channel (by itself) and it boots fine. The other has another drive, with the 80JB configured to Master, with another hd as slave, and it boots fine too, both using WinXP Pro.

more info would help

Oh, and welcome to the forums

 

[CraigRT]

Have you tried putting another drive on as SLAVE and setting the 800JB to CS? Just a thought, worth a try.
buleyb is right, more info may be required. but that's just a suggestion to try.

 

[amyluvst]

The drive has to be set as Cable Select when used as the Master. Don't ask why, it just works.

 

[archaeopterix]

I have tried every possible combination and the only one that works is to have another HD as master and the 80JB as slave. _Everything_ else fails to boot windowsXP or start the installation. The only explanation that I can give is a malfunction at the circuits of the drive which prevents it to function correctly if it is master or stand-alone. The surface has no bad blocks and the disk is fully readable, if slave. As I said I have tried it at several pc-s and I get the same behaviour. In the past I have seen the same problem at a WD 80BB and I posted here in case it is a known problem.

 

[buleyb]

Another thing, have you tried using a different jumper? Just a thought, but this reminds me of a friend in college who's harddrive never liked certain cable configs, and it turns out the jumper he was using was mangled to the point where it never truely shunted the pints.

 

[archaeopterix]

I have tried it. Nothing is solved. I was wandering is some is familiar with any firmware update...

 

[CraigRT]

It has to be a BIOS problem... see if your motherboard has a BIOS update for that hard drive. it is possible, I've had to do something like that more than once on PC's.

 

[archaeopterix]

No, there is no update. And I have tried it at many pcs.

 

[Cerb]

K7S5A Rev 3 by any chance?

 

[archaeopterix]

No. A7N8X. Seems I have to use the 3-years guarantee.

 

[amyluvst]

I have the same hard drive, and the A7N8X deluxe mobo. Had the same problem. I imaged my old boot drive onto my new drive, WD800JB. The new drive would not let me boot my computer if it was set to master on either the primary or secondary ide channels. It would only boot from the original boot drive if the WD800JB was set to slave, on either ide channel. I finally found somewhere where this drive had to be set to cable select with the jumper if it was to be used as the master drive on either ide channel, whether it was the boot drive or not. Sorry if you've already tried this, but it sounds exactly like what I was going through....

 

[Cerb]

Originally posted by: archaeopterix
No. A7N8X. Seems I have to use the 3-years guarantee.

OK. I had a similar problem with a rev 3 K7S5A and WD800JB.

 

[billyjak]

Follow This exactlly.
The ED drives are picky about this.

 

[zettler]

I have a similar problem (WD800JB) and two different PC's will recognize the WD80GB hard drive under SYSTEM devices BUT will not as a DRIVE under MY COMPUTER.

Here is what I wrote elsewhere and have done to date:

"I bought one of those $20 Western Digital 80 gigabyte hard drives from OM (7200rpm, 8MB cache) and used it as a second HD in my new PC build. Started out with a WD 120GB with Win XP on it, then added the 80 GB Western Digital after I had it all setup and working. Have tried new IDE cables, Slave/Master, Cable Select, cut the two wires in the cable (one at first, then a second), and so on...

And my Windows XP will still not assign a drive ID to it or have it show up under "MY COMPUTER" BUT it will show up under "HARDWARE" in the SYSTEM listing. I have tried uninstalling it, shutting it down, rebooting, cleaning the registry and ALL the above tricks - WHAT am I doing wrong????

My MB is an EP-8RDA+ Rev. 1.1 and has a December 2003 (I believe) BIOS. The system is doing great but will not register the second hard drive, allow me to format it (obviously), or anything at all with it.

I have wasted the last 24 hours on it and even tried a second WD80GB hard drive and it wont work either....


FOLLOWUP REPLY: "I didn't think about dropping the CDRW and the DVDRW drives and adding the WD80 on that cable?/!

I will try that.

I am pretty darn sure though that I have tried the Cable Select, Master Slave, etc., on the other."


SECOND FOLLOWUP: "Well, I tried the other cable without the CDRW's and still no go.

Even tried a second WD 80G HD (brand new) and no go.

Then I tried it in another PC with a different MB - an ABIT - and no go all over the place.

I cannot format what Windows XP doesn't list as a Drive (C, D, E, F, etc.) and that goes for two separate PC's and two new WD80GB hard drives. I am at a loss....

What I also find strange is that the software on CD that comes with the Hard drives will not run in Windows XP Pro, as it crashes. That goes for the downloaded update from WD's site.

How could I get two bad drives....?"


I then read this thread and went to the WD site and tried the different sttings for the jumpers....no go. This is really getting me p1ssed!

Any suggestions?/!

Thanks!

 

[MasterHoss]

Just to make sure, if the drive is alone on the IDE channel, you have to insert the jumper horizontally over any of the pins and not vertically (NB: DO NOT attempt to set it to Master, Slave, or Cable Select)

 

[zettler]

Originally posted by: MasterHoss
Just to make sure, if the drive is alone on the IDE channel, you have to insert the jumper horizontally over any of the pins and not vertically (NB: DO NOT attempt to set it to Master, Slave, or Cable Select)

I tried it in two PCs as a single drive too but never with the jumpers positioned horizontally. I might still try it but am ready to trade the WD for a Maxtor...

 

[zettler]

Problems solved!

From another forum. I received this advice:

"If it shows up in hardware, then Windows has seen it on the IDE interface. I presume you have tried to partition it?"

Me: "Excuse my Newbie'ness, but how can you partition it if the drive does not show up as a drive under Windows XP with a designated ID (C:, D:, E:, etc.)?"

Response: "Control Panel -> Administrative Tools -> Computer Managment -> Storage -> Disk Managment -> Partition the drive you want(that being the 80GB WD drive) I myself run with an 100gb WD 8mb as slave without any problems."

"Trekster points out how to partition the drive... Basically, partitioning the drive splits it up into the drive letters. A new disk won't have any partitioning, so won't have any drive letters. The OS isn't clever enough to know how or if you want to segment the disk.

Once you've partitioned the disk (It can be a single partition - that's ok too), then the drive gets it's letter(s), and you can format it."

My final comment and response: "It worked!

Why doesn't Western Digital tell you that in the instructions!!!

I just cant believe it was that easy and I had spent hours, and I mean hours, trying to figure this out. I even bought a second one to see if it was the unit I bought that was bad. I just took that one back to Best Buy as I thought it was corrupt or broken....

Why doesn't the WD web site refer to this issue, as their software that was included with the hard drives (and even the on-line updated version) would crash each and every time (and on both PC's) that I tried to use it. What a damn waste of my time BUT THANK you all and the "good" power of the Internet to come to my rescue."