Hard Drive powers down constantly

[Plaster]

My friend has a weird problem. Whenever he hooks up his 1gb WD Hard drive as a slave, it constantly powers itself off when not in use. It does this in DOS as well as Windows. All power saving options are disabled. It cuases an annoying pause whenever accessing Windows explorer, or any other drive reading program. Anybody have a clue as to how to fix this?

[BrettH]

If it does it in DOS, about the only places that can be causing this are the BIOS and the drive itself. Check the BIOS first for any power management settings, then WD's website for info on that model if this doesn't help.

Hope this is useful.

[nk4]

Does he have EZ Bios installed on the WD drive? I am not saying it is causing this, but it is a utility that comes with WD drives that controls some functions of the drive replacing and has higher priority than the BIOS. It *might* have something to do with it.

What happens if it is installed as secondary master?

[Plaster]

I'm going to attempt putting it as a secondary Master. The weird thingis, when it'ss set at primary master, it stays on.

[DavidX]

It sounds like the jumpers on the drive are set to "Master". If you want to use it as a slave, set the jumpers appropriately. There is probably a label on the drive telling you how to do this. If not, visit the WD website and look it up: www.westerndigital.com (http://www.westerndigital.com)

[This message has been edited by DavidX (edited 06-06-99).]

[Plaster]

It's not drive Jumpers. I think it's his motherboard, or maybe his PS. I place the same drive in my PC with the same setting and I can't recreate this little phenom. Thanks for the suggestions, he's just going to use one drive.