Added a 5th harddrive now winderz wont launch

[Skywalker[TSG]]

Got me some problems here .

I added a few harddrives yesterday and everything ran fine , however I couldn't find a spare power plug for the 5th drive
so I got one today but when I add the 5th drive the computer wont load winderz , everything works fine with just 4 drives.


I dont get it.

Any suggestions ?

[iNeb]

What are you using to add the extra drives? A controler card?

WHat about power supply? What watts? What's hooked up to the PSU?

[Skywalker[TSG]]

I'm using a controller card and it works great , The 5th drive is connected to the motherboard controller and not the PCI card.

The PSU is a cheap 350w unit , I'm guessing this could be the problem. What I currently have connected to the unit is

4x80giggers 7200rpm
CD-RW DVD-combo
Asus A7V333-X motherboard
AMD XP2200+
Matrox G400Max videocard
2 blue cathode tubes
4 case fans

It's when I connect the 5th drive a 60gig samsung that I get problems , the computer works fine otherwise.

[Nighthawk]

Where does it fail? Does it give an error message? Is the hard drive recognized by the BIOS?

You could try unplugging one of the 80GB hard drives and seeing if Windows will load. If it does, it very well could be a power issue. If it doesn't, it's probably that drive.

[Skywalker[TSG]]

The computer detects all 5 drives but it wont load windows.
There is no error message , the screen just goes blank after POST and BOOT.

I tried to disconnect my cathodes and cdrw but that didn't help
The drive worked perfectly just the other day and I have not that I'm aware of damaged it in any way.

[Tomteriffic]

Have you checked your boot order in BIOS? That could be the rub. Also, Winderz will probably automatically assign drive letter C: to the drive that's connected to the motherboard directly. This will get things all fouled up. Ran into the same situation adding an IDE hard drive to an all-SCSI system recently.

[Idigguns]

You might want to go into BIOS and check your Boot Order. It's probably trying to boot from the new HDD first, since that one is hooked to the mobo and the rest are going through the PCI card. When there was no HDD plugged into the mobo, it would go to the next think to try to boot from, like the PCI card. The other thing you could try is to put the drive that Windows is on on the mobo and put the new drive on the PCI card.


***oops, Tom beat me to it!

[Skywalker[TSG]]

The drive is on the secondary slave position and has no OS on it.
2of the 80giggers are on the Primary connector and they are first in the boot chain and it's the primary master that has the OS on it.

The 5th drive should be detected like any other drive in the system. Not like this.

[MDS]

sorry for the double got server error the first time.

[MDS]

"cheap 350w unit" I would have to say there lies your problem as you are runing all the drives plus lights, fans and a AMD XP and killing the psu which in turn I have seen fry mobo from lack of correct amps to the mobo.