hard drive problems

BillScarab

Recently my hard drive started playing up so I took an up to date ghost image of it and ordered a new one. Over the weekend the original finally packed in, the new one arrived today so I installed it in the case and rebooted. However the new one was not recognised when it booted. I went into the BIOS and checked and everything was set to auto-detect, tried detecting it there and it wouldn't recognise it. I've tried it as the primary and the slave on both IDE channels and it is never detected. Have I missed something obvious? It's a while since I installed a new IDE drive.

For info

the old drvie was a 60Gb Maxtor ata 100

the new drive is a Seagate 160gb ata 133

As far !!! I can tell either the drive is knackered or I am doing something really dumb. I did wonder if the ata 133 drives needed a different/better cable to a ata100 drive but AFAIk they don't. I did check the motherbaord manual ans it says it supports ultra dma 133 so the disk should be compatible.

Any suggestions would be gratefully received as I'm currently restoring onto an ancient 20gb drive I found in a cupboard (at least it works!).

I won't be able to reply for a couple of days as I'm going into hospital to have a kidney stone removed but I'll check back when I'm out.

SkipClick

I had this problem few days ago turn out to be the motherboard gone dead may be in your case. The other thing you can try to update your bios settings depends what motherboard you have. :eek:

bingo_bango

When you say it isn't detected, do you mean in explorer as well as BIOS?

When you install a HDD, you need to format it.
Go to Control Panel->Admin Tools->Computer Management(?)->Disk Management
The HDD should show up there, and you can rchhose format from the options menu.

bingo_bango

In a similar vein...I've got a HDD prob of my own. I have an IDE mobo, with a 40Gb IDE HDD. I bought a 160 Gb SATA drive, along with a sata controller (PCI). Couldn't get it to work for weeks, then last week, I changed BIOS to disable quick POST, and it saw the drive. Went in and formatted and partitioned it, and checked in explorer...sure enough, new drive showing. Great I thought...more space.
Next evening, switched comp on, and nada. Nowhere to be seen. I've no idea why not, and still have full POST running on startup. I don't think the drive is shagged, so anyone got any ideas.

brummybloke

have you made sure your power supply is not overworked?

i was having problems with my hd ( well one of them) and it ended up being the power unit, i changed and got a decent one and everything it tickety boo.

bingo_bango

Had thought of that, but checked the draw on it, and it has some headroom, so should be fine.
Not sure about Bills though.