Problem with 2 HDDs

[Brainchild]

I just tried to add a HDD to my sons computer, but It is doing nothing but giving me problems. I was going to make it the master, and slave the other , but I couldn't install 98. So I decided ust to slave it and run the original HDD as the master, but it freezes up. Not always in the same place, but will always freeze.
Also during the post, while it's checking for drives it takes forever, but always finds all the drives, and they are accessible in windows. If I unhook the new one it boot into windows in seconds
I formatted the new drive in windows, didn't help. I also changed the CPU today, but it worked fine, we used it for an hour, or so and it worked great.
I have the same setup myself, and have no problems

Specs
Amptron PM-9800
k6 2 450 @450
1.2 WD HDD
2.4 WD HDD
USB PCI card
16 mb creative banshee
modem


Thanx

[EvilRick]

Have you tried swapping out which IDE channels they're on? Like move the two HDD's over to the channel the CD-ROM is on?

You may just have an IDE controller that's flaky.

[daveleau]

Are you sure the jumpers are correct?
I have had this problem and have corrected it by placing the flaky drive in the cable select mode (jumper setting).
And, like EvilRick said, try the other IDE, if you haven't already.
Good luck
Dave

[Brainchild]

I have tried that Idea. right now I have IDE 1 with the original drive, and CD-ROM slaved, the newe drive is on #2. I tried it the other way round too. Crazy

Are they both WD drives, or is one a cloned something-or-other? Some older drives (notably Conner (now seagate) and IBM) were very finicky about what they would share with. WD never had this prob AFAIK.

Check and recheck jumpers and jumper pins. Has the jumper lost it's metal insert? Happened to me once, and it took me ages to figure that one out! Also, some older drives have a diff jumper pinout for slaves which are not ATA compatible. Shouldn't be an issue for drives over 1G, but worth checking the specs for.

Also, are both drive physically intact? Sometimes a flaky drive can cause this, even though the BIOS will pick it up OK.

Good luck.

Cheers
Mick

[Brainchild]

Mick, both drives a WD, and the jumper settings are on teh front of them. I have tried every way possible. It boots great wit hjust one drive in it, but hook both up and it takes a good 2 minutes compared to 45 seconds. That's just to get to loading windows. That is a whole other thread it's right here I posted it right before this one

Thanx

How about your BIOS settings. Do you have an ATAPI compliant BIOS, and is DMA enabled/disabled for any of the IDE channels in the BIOS? Maybe the CDROM is conflicting in some way. Tried with out the CDROM connected at all?

This could also cause a prob for loading win98 from a CD, as windows won't consistently find the CD drive to copy files from.

www.pcguide.com has a section on BIOS and IDE controllers. Check out http://www.pcguide.com/ref/hdd/if/id...rollers-c.html and browse through the info. It may help you come to a solution. Might be you need to change something that the BIOS is autosetting. If it's an Intel chipset, that's quite likely.

Cheers
Mick

[Ace McGirk]

some drives have a setting for "single" drive.
My western digital drives need no jumper if they are the only drive on a channel.(should be hooked to the end connector though)

On the bios side,make sure the settings are set to auto for hdd detection.

another possibility, the IDE cables?
If you switch them around does the problem change?

[NDC]

Yep, it could be the IDE cables also. My CDROM and CDRW drive which were working perfectly all of the sudden started giving me problems reading CD's. It was detected by the BIOS just fine, but frequently, the drives started disappearing in Device Manager or causing hard lockups when trying to read CD's. I replaced the IDE cable and all is fine now...

[Speed]

The last thing that would cross my mind is the cables. But I guess it happens allot. Try replacing them.

Dave.