BAFFLING! - False connection on HDs

[Scully]

I have a 2 year old Athlon with 2 HDs. Occasionally one of the HDs will get
'disconnected'. The first time it happened it scared the sh*t outta me, I
had gone out & returned to find a black screen with a message saying 'press
any key to reboot'. Having done so the BIOS failed to recognize the Master
with the OS. Just in case, I dug up a screwdriver, removed the side of the
case & pushed both connections into the main drive, rebooted & this time the
HD was back in action.

Afterwards it would be the second drive (the slave or D:/ drive) that would,
occasionally, lose connection, with Windows saying "you have unplugged or
ejected the following device...", sometimes crashing afterwards. Lately it
has been the C: drive again playing up: Windows will usually freeze,
sometimes the PC will reboot itself (no blue screens) & then the BIOS will
fail to recognize the drive. After touching the cables the connection will
be restored & Windows will start as normal.

I don't think it's the HD itself that's at fault as it can happen to either
drive. Otherwise the drives are OK, all the data intact & all apps running
(except once when Windows got corrupted after this happened in the middle of
downloading stuff & it wouldn't start). Physically the connections go as far
as they can go, I wonder whether this could be a fault of the onboard
controller on the MB or something wrong with the cables.

A few times the PC has not started normally, instead the BIOS setup screen
has come up by itself with a message that there was an 'improper external
CPU setting' & it had 'restored the default settings', which I must change:
the multiplier resets itself to 10x but the PC doesn't work well with this
setting, it tends to go into 'suspended animation' if I leave it like that.
If I reset it to 13x the PC works like a charm. This doesn't happen every
time the false connection occurs, only sometimes.

Any ideas? Is this a MB, CPU, HD or cable problem?

Many thanks

 

[Li'l ol' me]

You've checked the connections, but what about the connectors as you briefly
mention? Try different ones in different drives. Or better still, a totally
different PSU.

 

[Tom J]

My bet is your ribbon cable is bad. It's cheap to buy a new cable if you
don't already have a spare laying around. You get a new one every time you
buy a drive, CD or DVD.

Tom J

 

[LM]

I have a 2 year old Athlon with 2 HDs. Occasionally one of the HDs
will get 'disconnected'. The first time it happened it scared the
sh*t outta me, I had gone out & returned to find a black screen with
a message saying 'press any key to reboot'. Having done so the BIOS
failed to recognize the Master with the OS. Just in case, I dug up a
screwdriver, removed the side of the case & pushed both connections
into the main drive, rebooted & this time the HD was back in action.

<snip for brevity>

Had a similar problem when I added a "Y" power cable. Seems that,
although the white modular portion of the cable was firmly seated
into the drive, the actual pins inside the modular had been pushed
throught (though not visibly) and were barely making contact with
the drive's pins, causing all kinds of "weird" drive problems...
sometimes it'll work... sometimes not!

Also, if you have "old-ish" ribbon cables, you might want to change
them too, as the heat build-up inside the case can make them brittle.

HTH,
Charlie Legman

 

[Zvi Netiv]

I have a 2 year old Athlon with 2 HDs. Occasionally one of the HDs will get
'disconnected'. The first time it happened it scared the sh*t outta me, I
had gone out & returned to find a black screen with a message saying 'press
any key to reboot'. Having done so the BIOS failed to recognize the Master
with the OS. Just in case, I dug up a screwdriver, removed the side of the
case & pushed both connections into the main drive, rebooted & this time the
HD was back in action.

Afterwards it would be the second drive (the slave or D:/ drive) that would,
occasionally, lose connection, with Windows saying "you have unplugged or
ejected the following device...", sometimes crashing afterwards. Lately it
has been the C: drive again playing up: Windows will usually freeze,
sometimes the PC will reboot itself (no blue screens) & then the BIOS will
fail to recognize the drive. After touching the cables the connection will
be restored & Windows will start as normal.

I don't think it's the HD itself that's at fault as it can happen to either
drive. Otherwise the drives are OK, all the data intact & all apps running
(except once when Windows got corrupted after this happened in the middle of
downloading stuff & it wouldn't start). Physically the connections go as far
as they can go, I wonder whether this could be a fault of the onboard
controller on the MB or something wrong with the cables.

A few times the PC has not started normally, instead the BIOS setup screen
has come up by itself with a message that there was an 'improper external
CPU setting' & it had 'restored the default settings', which I must change:
the multiplier resets itself to 10x but the PC doesn't work well with this
setting, it tends to go into 'suspended animation' if I leave it like that.
If I reset it to 13x the PC works like a charm. This doesn't happen every
time the false connection occurs, only sometimes.

Any ideas? Is this a MB, CPU, HD or cable problem?

It certainly is one of the above, but the fact that it happened on either drives
excludes the drives themselves and limits the suspects to the cable and
connector at the board side, if the two drives share the same data flat cable.

If the two drives are on separate IDE channels then that could make the onboard
IDE chip a suspect too.

There isn't much you can do, except checking and fixing bent pins and replacing
the data flat cable with a new one, until the problem becomes definitive, or
disappears after having fixed the above.

Regards, Zvi