Hard Drive issue... don't know what to do?
 

I'm running a maxtor 120GB ATA 133 as my primary HDD. I purchased a maxtor 200GB ATA 133 as a slave for storing data. Worked great for a couple weeks... now I have a problem... the 200GB Hard Drive will crash the system when I have it set up with the 120GB Drive, however, each drive will function flawlessly when they are connected individually. I'm at a loss here, I originally thought the 200GB drive was bad, but it works fine all by itself... could someone lend a hand here? I have a lot of files on there.... Thanks to anyone who can help!

Give us a hand helping you by answering some questions, if you would.

What OS?

What HD interface are you using? PATA or SATA?

Have you checked the jumpers on the drives to make sure you're setting them appropriately? Some drives will get very funky if the jumpers aren't set right.

Further to what billege said, if they're set to cable select (cs) try setting them to master and slave. Cable select is broken and can cause problems like this.

Possible power supply issue? 2nd drive may be more load than managable?


Just a thought.

I hate cable select... I always take the time to set the jumpers to master and slave because I know somewhere down the line...my decision to set it to cable select is going to bite me in the ass.

If the drives work fine independently and on seperate cables, then it's either the jumper settings or maybe an issue with the cable connecting the two itself.

How can both drives work fine when operated individually?

Do you have Windows installed on both of them?

Thanks for replying everyone, I'll answer a few questions here if I can.

OS is Windows XP SP2,
I'm running PATA hard drives,
Both Jumpers are configured correctly, set to master and slave, not CS.
Power supply is 450W.

Here's what I did today with no result: I removed my CD rom drives and installed the 200GB slave as the secondary IDE, first as master, then as slave, and each time the computer just would not respond, I went in to BIOS to enable boot priority, but with both drives hooked up, the boot priority setting becomes disabled and inaccessible.

I have windows installed only on the 120GB drive, I went to install windows on the slave, but it's telling me I have to format before I can install it, so that's why I'm not just installing windows on the second drive, I'd really like to get the files out that are on that drive.

Any more questions please ask, I'll answer them as best I can....

P.S. system specs:

Intel P4 @ 3.32 GHz
1.5 GB PC 2700 DDRAM
Asus P4C-800E Motherboard.
Power supply is 450W Peak, if that helps.

Thanks again to all of you!

Oh, I also configured my parents' Hard drive to run as a slave from their PC, long story short, I removed it to extract a virus Via my machine, and the same thing happened. PC would not respond, boot select disabled, etc. etc... I don't understand why it would do this, but maybe the PSU just can't output?

Have you tried putting the drives on seperate channels entirely? Put the boot drive on IDE channel 0, drive 0, and the other one on channel 1, drive 0. they'll both be set to master, no slave present. the one on channel 0 should be where the bios looks for a boot drive.
I think.

Billege, I tried that yesterday as well, setting the slave as Channel 1 drive 0, still had no luck :(

Edit: I also noted that while the boot select was disabled, the BIOS still let me know that it detected both hard drives... I'm at a loss!