Multiple HDD Problems

[Andreworld]

My PC was working fine with multiple HDD installed. I have four (al
maxtor).

2 X 80Gb
1 X 120Gb
1 X 40 GB

All of a sudden my PC refused to start. The CPU fan would spin up the
immediately stop. I discovered that the only way to get the thing t
start was to remove all the IDE's (& 1 X DVDRW) unplug the PSU the
reconnect with just one of the HDD & the DVDRW.

I've checked all the other disks on numerous other pc's as primar
master's and as secondary slaves etc, they seem to work fine (includin
booting to windows xp) in any configuration.

I changed my motherboard for another (fairly good one), but the proble
continues.

I've also noticed, despite clean XP Pro installations on any of th
HDD, everything seems to run slow like my old win98se 4Gb AMD 500 (32M
ram).

I've checked the memory and again can't find any probs, runs fine i
other PC's and showed nothing of note on the MEMtest86.

I put in a brand new (retail) AMD Athlon 3000 too.

I'm at a loss. Can anyone suggest anything please

 

[Mike Hall]

Reset BIOS to default settings.. check that memory installed matches.. this
is not just important re. the motherboard.. some systems are not tolerant of
sticks that are different to each other..

Start with one drive and the CD/DVD.. use the drive that you want to use for
Primary.. set the boot sequence and start over with the XP CD.. select
remove partitions and format..

When installed and running ok, then add other drives one at a time.. applies
to any devices other than keyboard, mouse, and screen.. add devices until
the point at which the system starts to fall over.. DO NOT MAKE ANY CHANGES
TO BIOS WHILE DOING THIS.. leave BIOS as default settings.. also.. DO NOT
MAKE ANY CHANGES TO XP DEFAULT SETUP WHILE DOING THIS..

Report back to this thread.. somebody will be here to help further.. Good
luck..

 

[Guest]

Have you tryed replacing the power suply?

 

[Bob Davis]

My PC was working fine with multiple HDD installed. I have four (all
maxtor).

2 X 80Gb
1 X 120Gb
1 X 40 GB

All of a sudden my PC refused to start. The CPU fan would spin up then
immediately stop. I discovered that the only way to get the thing to
start was to remove all the IDE's (& 1 X DVDRW) unplug the PSU then
reconnect with just one of the HDD & the DVDRW.

I've checked all the other disks on numerous other pc's as primary
master's and as secondary slaves etc, they seem to work fine (including
booting to windows xp) in any configuration.

I changed my motherboard for another (fairly good one), but the problem
continues.

I've also noticed, despite clean XP Pro installations on any of the
HDD, everything seems to run slow like my old win98se 4Gb AMD 500 (32Mb
ram).

I've checked the memory and again can't find any probs, runs fine in
other PC's and showed nothing of note on the MEMtest86.

I put in a brand new (retail) AMD Athlon 3000 too.

I'm at a loss. Can anyone suggest anything please?

I would suspect the PSU is being overloaded by all that hardware spinning
up. What size PSU do you use now? I run three drives, sometimes four if
mobile rack is populated, among many other things, and I have an Antec 480w
Truepower PSU. I wouldn't use a PSU spec'd at anything lower.