IDE drives -- only one works at a time!

LHW99

One other item to consider
Have just set up a new WIN8 system with two SSD's. Added an older 1TB WD drive that had been working happily for several years in an earlier system. No problems for a couple of days - then the whole system went black, no safe mode no responses.
Took the drive out, computer happy.
Put drive back into a VISTA computer. All OK, started transferring files off and after being absolutely fine for several days - drive fault.

Could it be that you old drive has suddenly decided it has issues?

esuhl

LHW99 wrote: »

Could it be that you old drive has suddenly decided it has issues?

Possibly... But the drive works fine in the "master" position.

I think either the motherboard controller is struggling to detect the drives because one has no partitions, OR there is some kind of fault on the IDE connector (or electronics) of the drive itself that stops the slave being detected.

Maybe... :-/

Sheesh. All this palaver just to snag a free Windows 10 licence I might never use! Thanks, Microsoft! :-P

prowla

Well, you could try an add-on IDE controller, if you've got a free slot.
Or even a SATA-IDE adapter (if you've got a free SATA).
Or even check the disks in another PC.

Heedtheadvice

Apologies, must be a typo in that link I gave you but the still a good forum.

Well the only great change is the lack of partitions. That however dies not make logical sense from the BIOS point of view but......

Set the drive up solo and use partition magic or other software to make partitions without data loss?

Your idea of "remembered state by the BIOS" was sort of why the earlier suggestion of setting the BIOS manually.

The idea of adding an ide controller might be a good work around but will not answer why the problem has started. Have you got one? If not pm me as I think I have a spare if you wish to try.

esuhl

Heedtheadvice wrote: »

The idea of adding an ide controller might be a good work around but will not answer why the problem has started. Have you got one? If not pm me as I think I have a spare if you wish to try.

Thanks very much for your kind offer, but... I think I've cracked it! (Sort of...)

prowla wrote: »

Or even check the disks in another PC.

Good idea! I should've tried that sooner.

I set it as the master, and it was detected by the BIOS but didn't appear in Windows (even via the diskmgmt.msc MMC snap-in).

I set it as the slave, and Windows blue-screened during boot. Going into the BIOS, the drive name wasn't detected properly:



The BIOS has a "detect drive" option, which seemed to detect the drive with the correct name. But saving the BIOS values caused the PC to reboot, and the drive detection to reset, displaying the same gobbledekook ID in the POST messages, before trying to load Windows and blue-screening again.

So, I guess the disk is knackered in some way. It's strange... it works fine externally.

Anyway, thank you all for your tips and suggestions -- much appreciated!
:beer:

Nilrem

It's been a very long time since I did much with IDE drives, but I seem to remember the scrambled name being an indicator of either a damaged cable, or the drive interface failing.
Which given the age of IDE drives now is an increasing possibility.

esuhl

Nilrem wrote: »

It's been a very long time since I did much with IDE drives, but I seem to remember the scrambled name being an indicator of either a damaged cable, or the drive interface failing.
Which given the age of IDE drives now is an increasing possibility.

Ahh... Funnily enough I found a forum thread earlier where someone else had exactly the same problem. They traced it to a faulty IDE cable (whereas I tried 3 different cables with exactly the same behaviour).

So I think you're right -- some kind of dodgy interface corruption malarky. I haven't bought an IDE drive for about ten years, so it must be pretty old.

Heedtheadvice

Well, given that your other drive works fine would seem to rule out the cable(s).
Your conclusion the drive is failing could well be correct especially given the intermittency when you add the drive parameters to the BIOS and then get issues.
Given your drive does seem to be working solo as master at the moment: copy off the data? :Whilst in a working config try the drive test software supplied by the manufacturers mentioned in post 4. Might just reveal an issue that can be fixed or give you a more definitive answer to imminent total failure - that would then almost rule out any other problems except PSU power?