IDE drives -- only one works at a time!

prowla

One other permutation - do they work as a slave without the master present?

paddyrg

Long shot, but could it be a power thing? An aging supply that can literally only power one drive at a time? Just throwing it into the mix.

Nilrem

paddyrg wrote: »

Long shot, but could it be a power thing? An aging supply that can literally only power one drive at a time? Just throwing it into the mix.

That's a good point.

I've seen prebuilds that were less than a year old and couldn't cope with a second HDD back in the IDE days.
They were specced so closely to the requirements for the machine to save costs that they literally could not cope with the 12 watts or whatever on the relevant PSU line to allow for a second 7200rpm drive.

And as you say, ageing PSU's lose capacity over time.

Ainsley1

Interesting poser this one.
Really need to monitor PSU voltages on load, one less thing to consider then.
Also when you get the win10 drive back out of the cupboard (or another ide drive) substitute for the optical drive and see the results of those various combinations.

Is the bios auto detect? Can it be set manually? Wouldn't explain the current non functioning but might get it going......

Oh and added during edit having considered responses to Heedtheadvice's posts do you know if the BIOS needs updating or if it has been during the win 10 update (though I don't see why or how it would).

esuhl

Thanks, everyone, for the tips -- I'm giving it a rest for today, but I'll be back when I've got time to have a play around.

prowla wrote: »

One other permutation - do they work as a slave without the master present?

I... don't think that would be possible, would it? IDE needs a master to control the channel (doesn't it?). Each drive works fine as the master drive by itself.

paddyrg wrote: »

Long shot, but could it be a power thing? An aging supply that can literally only power one drive at a time? Just throwing it into the mix.

Good call, but I don't think so. It's a fairly decent 650W supply and I haven't noticed any other performance anomalies.

Ainsley1 wrote: »

Interesting poser this one.
Really need to monitor PSU voltages on load, one less thing to consider then.

I had a quick look at the voltages being reported in SpeedFan, and they seem pretty rock-solid, even when I load up a game and a few virtual machines.

Ainsley1 wrote: »

Is the bios auto detect? Can it be set manually? Wouldn't explain the current non functioning but might get it going......

There's one option for the J-Micron eSATA/PATA controller -- enable or disable. When enabled, you can select either IDE or AHCI mode. (I tried both just in case, but it was working previously in AHCI mode.)

Ainsley1 wrote: »

Oh and added during edit having considered responses to Heedtheadvice's posts do you know if the BIOS needs updating or if it has been during the win 10 update (though I don't see why or how it would).

Good idea, but alas, I have the latest BIOS version already. I needed it to get my new PCIe SSD working!

And anyway, it's been working like this without problem for years! Infuriating!

Give me some time and I'll read all the posts again and try to sort it out!

prowla

I guess you could check the power by unplugging all of the other drives.

I thought I had used a slave only configuration before, but I don't have any IDE systems anymore.

Also, in the interests of "when logical explanations fail"...

Silly question #1, Is it possible to plug in the connector the wrong way up?

Silly question #2: No bent pins?

Silly question #3: Is it possible you have two faulty cables?

Silly question #4: Do both power cables work?

Silly question #5: Do both drives spin up when connected at the same time?

Silly question #6: When plugging in, the master should be the drive at the end of the cable and the slave the one in the middle, right?

esuhl

Well I had a spare 20 minutes to try a few things and I'm none the wiser! :-/

I swapped the current IDE HDD for the one I installed Windows 10 on, and magically both HDD and optical drives are detected fine.

I replaced the original drive and, as before, only the master device is detected. Argh! All drives are set to "cable select" (as they always were).

So I tried using the jumper from the working Win10 drive on the other drive. Same problem. (Actually, I'll try swapping the jumper on the optical drive too in a minute, in case that one's faulty.)

prowla wrote: »

I guess you could check the power by unplugging all of the other drives.

I tried unplugging three of the SATA drives, but no luck there.

prowla wrote: »

Silly question #1, Is it possible to plug in the connector the wrong way up?

No -- the cables have a notch and the drives have a corresponding gap, so the cable can only be plugged in one way. The molex connectors have corners missing on one side, so they only plug in one way too.

prowla wrote: »

Silly question #2: No bent pins?

Not that I can see -- each drive works fine by itself as master. And the Win10 drive works fine as a slave.

prowla wrote: »

Silly question #3: Is it possible you have two faulty cables?

Unlikely, since the Win10 drive works fine with either cable, and I have an identical issue with both cables. I have plenty of other new/unused IDE cables I can test with, so I'll check with them later.

prowla wrote: »

Silly question #4: Do both power cables work?

Silly question #5: Do both drives spin up when connected at the same time?

Yep -- I can feel the IDE HDD spin up, and can eject the optical disc tray.

prowla wrote: »

Silly question #6: When plugging in, the master should be the drive at the end of the cable and the slave the one in the middle, right?

Yep.

I think the only explanation left is... witchcraft...? :-/

Well, I'm not going to let something so... trivial and ridiculous beat me! I'll play around with the drives cables and jumper some more. And maybe reset the BIOS too... Fingers crossed...

paddyrg

Witchcraft for sure.

If it helps (and something that helps me when getting confounded by silly issues), just remember how unlikely a computer is to ever work in the first place, and that they even get close is a miracle...

The electrons being switched inside tiny etchings on purified sand by other electrons, processors with multiple threads running simultaneously, and computers inside computers marshalling those threads, tiny platters of spinning rust with mini coils being directed at crazy speeds by magnets to read/write reliably, the billion or so lines of code in an operating system, including at the stuff you never see, the rich and crazy protocols of networking wirelessly, just that the whole darn pile is a miracle, and that when you consider the chances of it working as well as it does, 'not working' would seem the obvious default :'-(

prowla

You could always go to B&Q and buy a hammer (aka. "persuader"!

paddyrg

prowla wrote: »

You could always go to B&Q and buy a hammer (aka. "persuader"!

I think of it more as "encourager" ;-)