Interesting Hard drive issue.

Hello all, new to the forum, but looks like a good place to find some help.



My problem is pretty simple. My old IBM hard drive crashed, so I took my newer Seagate Baracuda 200GB drive that was for storage, and switched that to my OS drive, and added a 500GB Baracuda for storage (with various partitions).



Right from day 1, actually 2nd or 3rd day, I've randomly been getting blue screens that reboot my computer. At that point, my BIOS no longer picks up my Master drive, only the 500GB. So I get the "no operating system error" and hangs. Once that happens, the BIOS switches the primary boot device to the storage drive and of course XP isn't on it, so it loops.



The thing is, I've found out, if I turn the power supply power off and back on, and boot the machine, my Primary drive returns. All I do is change the HD boot priority back to the 200GB drive and it boots. The only noticeable problem is the blue screen which symbolizes to me, that the drive just vanished again.



I've got the latest BIOS for my mobo (ASUS A8N-SLI premium).



The tricky thing is when it's used for storage, it's fine. It's never dissapeared in windows or the BIOS. This has only happened as the primary drive, and actually, when I first purchased the drive, I tried to make it my primary drive and it did then, so I put it back to the storage drive and it worked flawless. Now I want it as the primary drive and I'm out of ideas.



Any takers!?

did you install the mobo drivers?

Yes, everything is up to date on the mother board end of things. I've also tried a new IDE cable.

if the hdd is a sata interface it is possible that your mobo runs a slower sata speed than the drive try moving the jumper on the back of the drive to the slower speed and see if that helps.

Actually, it's an IDE drive, however I do have it on cable select. I will switch it to Master and see if that does anything.

Well now, I'm going to assume this is a cable problem for now. After switching it from cable select to master, 3 times in a row, just after the xp splash screen, it crashed and reboots then the drive vanishes in bios. I did the exact same thing to get it working as I mentioned in my original post, now it's running. I've left the jumper on Master for now.



I used to have 40 cables in this house, now I've got none to try. Go figure.

Actually when I install my old IDE HD on my old P4



I have my 80 gig as my Master while the 20 gig as Cable Selected.



When I get my new computer now, which runs on SATA

it is the exact same. the new 320 gig SATA as Master while the IDE 80 gig as Cable select.

Found a new cable, no change. Still getting crashes, however I was able to read a portion of a blue screen and it mention IRQ in it, but the screen flashes so quick, I couldn't see anything else.

Seems like an memory error to me. Download Memtest86 from MS and put it on an CD. Run it on the computer. If you already tried many cables and already have the drivers installed, I'm going toward faulty hard drive.



http://www.memtest86.com/

Funny you mention that, because when I went through the trouble shooting on my drive that just crashed, I did memory tests to rule my ram out. It's good.



This drive may only work in slave mode for some reason, since that's all it's ever done effectively.