Major HDD problmes

[Harkonan]

ok guys heres the beef.

I currently have 3 HDD's. one old Maxtor 80Gb drive (around 3 years old now).
One Samsung spinpoint 200Gb (two month old)
Another Spinpoint 200Gb (brand spanking new)

so i go to install the new Spinpoint and every thing goes well with the phisical instalation, IDE and power connectors go in fine. but when the computer boots up the maxtor drive (the one with Windows XPMCE on it) isnt found. thinking this may be a slave master error, i remove the new spinpoint in order to move the jumper around. to check i boot up the computer - the new rive and it runs fine. chaning the jumper from cable select to slave i re insert the drive, now the computer doesnt reacognise any of the drives in the computer. i go through them one by one and the computer can reacongnise each individualy. but not together.
the errors are slightly different for each.

the two spin points give a "Un reacognised Partision table"
and the maxtor isnt even reacognised and give a "please insert proper boot media and press any key"

so i figure this could well be a formating problem. i re format one of the spinpoints (using on of my two CD drives). I then go to instal windows on it but half way through the process the drive stops working. so i connect up the other one ditto that. then i reserect an old computer (a white dell noless) to test the drives, none work on that eather. then i remove the white dells CD drive and put than in the new one. same thing happens again.

so thats the saga, any suggestions? any thing even remote would be welcome.

here are my hard ware specs.

Asus p4p800 se
NEC CDRW/DVD+RW
Samsung CD
Gforce 5200GT
2x Samsung spinpoint 200Gb
Maxtor 80Gb
Antec P180 case


thanks for lisening to the saga, and thanks in advance for any help.

 

[Harkonan]

well i think i have it connected up with every thing on a CS setting, and now one IDE cable of drives is not working wile the other does. im wondering if this will be best sloved by switching to a SATA, but that would take far to much time. any suggestions on what is wrong or how to fix the IDE's?

 

[Harkonan]

well after a long night playing around with power sockets and IDE cables, ive found that both the spinpoints work fine on any settings, however none of the CD drives or the old Maxtor will work on any of the IDE's or power sockets.
the maxtor is still not showing up, but its also producing no sounds nor vibrations, leading me to think its a dead drive. on the other hand the CD drives show a more puzzling conudrum. the lights which show drive useage light put, and in one case pulse. however the rives refuse to open the drive bay or show up in the BIOS.

any body got a diagnostic on this? its puzling the **** out of me.

 

[RicoDirenzo]

What type drives are these? Pata or Sata drives. Are all three hard drives IDE? Which drive is the OS installed? I presume it should be the 80 gig, right? Tell me all the drives on that puter and the jumper settings for each and where they are physically attached to the cables. I need the Mobo model. Lets start with the basic configuration and go from there. Nevermind about the mobo, I see your specs....just tell me how the dirves are connected to the Asus board.

 

[Harkonan]

all the drives are on a IDE PATA connection, and the OS is on the older Maxtor

the drives are currerntly in any fixed position, ive been moving them around to try and find a combination that worked. all the jumpers are currently on cable select.

 

[RicoDirenzo]

Here's the deal. Your two IDE hd's are on IDE 0. The fact that HD 3 is sitting in IDE1 makes that drive unreadable and the cd etc, as far as your bios is concerned, don't exist. Remove the third IDE hd and put only the cdroms/dvdroms on IDE 1. Pop for a $50 external USD or Firewire HD enclosier and attach your third HD that way. You can't have all those HD's hooked up IDE!

Edit: You could have a whole daisy chain of HD's on USB or pby installing a PCI SCSI card and then hooking up a bunch of External SCSI drives. The very nice thing about the evolution of SATA is that the PC can now have 4 internal HD's!!! But given the size and low cost of 300 gig drives, 1.2 trigs of hd space is ludicrous!!! buy a couple of SATA 250 gig HD's and be done with your dilema!!!!

 

[Harkonan]

yeah i am slowlty collecting them. however this doesnt explain why the maxtor still doent work when its the only drive connected, in IDE 0. or why the cd drive doenst connect on IDE 1 even when its the only thin attachec or with any of the other drives on IDE 0.
also i know for a fact that you can attach a HDD onto the IDE 1with a cd drive as only last week i saw a working example of this. unless this is spacific to my Mobo or HDD's.
im currently thinking of getting a couple of PATA to SATA converters just to reduce the ribbon clutter in the computer.

 

[RicoDirenzo]

Hmmm......now you forced me into my lab. I will go home and moneky with my 'test pc". I'll configure the IDE1 with a cdrom master and HD slave and then reverse the order and see what the Bios does with it. My guess is that neither protocol will work as I have never set up any of my PC's nor have run accross nor been asked to set up a system that way. I would, at this point, switch out the the IDE cables with new ones (or different ones) and see what happens. I'll post the results of the test later tonight!! I actually like being wrong about these things because it is the best way to gain new knowledge!!! My presumption has always been that the secondary IDE drives were for optical only. But given my age and lack of experimentation on this issue....Now I'm not sure. I will be later tonight!!!

 

[Harkonan]

im beging to wonder if this is case of the diagnosed Zebra. (if you hear hoofs dont think zebra think horse its the simple answer) and theat my optical drives and the older HDD are dead. they are all 3 years old accept one of the Cds which is over 5. but im wondering what the trigger is for this, my PSU is sucky but not so bad as to cause this. all the symptoms do point to dead drives, so maybe it is. good luck with the tests, hope you learn somthing new.
oh and cheers for helping.-+

 

[RicoDirenzo]

yep.......given all the data, the simplist observation which meets the basic criteria is, usually, the correct answer.