Hard drive issue

[Tiger Hawk]

I am having a problem with my computer and was hoping someone could help
me uderstand it. When I connect just one hard drive to my primary
on-board ide it runs fine. If I hook two up the slave is nomally not
seen. When it is seen, the drive is very slow. Changing which drive is
master and which is slave brings the same effect. I suspect a problem
with my onboard controller, but it baffles me as to why having one drive
hooked up works just fine. Im currently using one hard drive now and it
seems fine. No crashes, nothing. I have verified my jumper settings and
tried 3 cables. I also used cable select instead of the master or slave.

If it is the controller going bad, could this cause physical damage to
my drive? I bought the drives I am talking about because the previous
one I had failed. This computer is for my personal use, the whole family
has another. If the controller is failing then I will try to find
another board when I get the money, I just dont want to damage
my hard drive in the process.

My specs are below and Thanks in advance.

300w Power supply
Pentium 3 Slot 1 500mhz
128MB PC100 RAM
Floppy
40gig Seagate 7200 RPM HD (this is the one my system now)
40gig IBM 7200 RPM HD (its in the other computer as the Sec. slave)
LG CDROM Drive (unknown speed)
Tseng Labs ET6000 video Card
Zoom 56k PCI FAXMODEM

 

[Hamman]

If it is the controller going bad, could this cause physical damage to
my drive?

I doubt it, unless it decides to keep spinning the drive up and down

I bought the drives I am talking about because the previous one I had
failed. This computer is for my personal use, the whole family has another.

Sure the new drive isnt screwed? It might be an idea to try another.

If the controller is failing then I will try to find another board when I
get the money, I just dont want to damage
my hard drive in the process.

My specs are below and Thanks in advance.

300w Power supply

Ouch, 2 drives on a generic 300W PSU. Might explain a few things...

Pentium 3 Slot 1 500mhz
128MB PC100 RAM

Multiply that by four and things will happen a lot quicker