Strange hard drive problem

[jon1101]

I've been having this problem to some extent for several months, but recently it's become severe enough to really hinder the use of my PC. What happens is, seemingly at random, my Western Digital HDD "disappears." Specifically, Windows freezes and, upon rebooting, I find that the BIOS reports "none" under "primary master." This used to happen very infrequently and can be easily solved by reseating either the drive's power plug or the IDE cable, but recently I've been interrupted at least daily by this problem. Does anyone know what the problem is? Can this be fixed or is there a faulty part somewhere along the line that needs replaced? Thanks.

Jon

[Billforce]

Your hard drive could be giving up maybe but check the battery for your cmos. If the info. isn't saved in the bios, then it can't find the hard drive and you will need to reset it every time. Change the cmos battery.

[OlegB]

I'd also swap the IDE cable and make sur the power connector is nice and tight. Make sure ur IDE cable is an 80 conductor.

[FrnchDp]

Do the above mentioned.. and dont forget to start backing up frequently.. just lost my HD on my laptop and everything that wasn't backed up since last time :(

[BipolarBill]

Check the jumpers:

http://www.sysopt.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&threadid=136530

[jon1101]

Thank you all for the replies. I will change the CMOS battery as soon as I have the time. Hopefully that will fix it.

-jon

[BipolarBill]

Make sure it's nothing so simple as a worn-out Molex connector. The wires may be weakly connected.

Check those jumpers! Do not jumper a lone WD drive as master or you will eventually ruin it.

[Eric Legge]

Hard drives are cheap, so if the cable isn't faulty, I would get a new hard drive, install it as a slave drive, use the free XXCopy from http://www.xxcopy.com/ to clone the system to it, and then install it as the master drive and use the present master drive as a secondary drive.

The clone will be bootable.

Eric,
http://www.legge40.freeserve.co.uk/BuyerBeware.htm

[rmanet]

Originally posted by Eric Legge
Hard drives are cheap, so if the cable isn't faulty, I would get a new hard drive, install it as a slave drive, use the free XXCopy from http://www.xxcopy.com/ to clone the system to it, and then install it as the master drive and use the present master drive as a secondary drive.

The clone will be bootable.

Eric,
http://www.legge40.freeserve.co.uk/BuyerBeware.htm

a.) I'll bet the WD jumpers are set wrong and,
b.) using the manufacturer disk with the new HDD to "clone" the drive is easier than usinng xxcopy (usually)
c.) Eric's right, use that drive as a secondary - I backup my XP drive once a week - XP's crashed on me twice, very easy to pop in my maxtor diskette and copy the primary over as a "no brainer" safety measure

[BipolarBill]

The problem is sometimes that people think it must be jumpered right, because it's recognized. They won't even look. This is not the case with IBM and WD drives. They will go bad if misjumpered - even if they work right at first.

[rmanet]

Originally posted by BipolarBill
The problem is sometimes that people think it must be jumpered right, because it's recognized. They won't even look. This is not the case with IBM and WD drives. They will go bad if misjumpered - even if they work right at first.

that's the truth - IBM uses all sorts of HDD makers and WD are tricky (they work, then they don't , then they disappear)

[TheBoner]

does that same jumper problem occur with maxtor and samsung harddrives? i'm having the same problem with my maxtor, everytime i reboot i have to start up again with the startup disk, otherwise i get the system disk error message. the bios doesn't recognize it either.

[BipolarBill]

Originally posted by TheBoner
does that same jumper problem occur with maxtor and samsung harddrives? No.

[Johnny Fist]

I had the exact same problem with a 120Gb WD drive not too long ago. No matter how I set the jumpers or what PC I put it into, it alwayd did the same thing....sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn't. I'll never buy another Western Digital Product again.

[rmanet]

Originally posted by TheBoner
does that same jumper problem occur with maxtor and samsung harddrives? i'm having the same problem with my maxtor, everytime i reboot i have to start up again with the startup disk, otherwise i get the system disk error message. the bios doesn't recognize it either.

I wouldn't give up on WD drives altogether, but I usually buy Maxtor too....

TheBoner - start another thread with more details and maybe we can help :t