IDE channel conflicts suddenly arose

[goofything]

I have two hard drives attached to my first IDE channel and two CD
roms attached to my second (a CD-rom and CDRW drive). Everything had
been working fine for quite a while, then suddenly one day, the drives
stopped showing up. I can't remember exactly what happened, but I
think the second hard drive didn't appear or one or two of the CD
drives. Anyway, I tried to resolve the problem with no luck. I have
tried switching around all the drives and switching master/slave
relationships, all with no luck--many configurations caused the
machine to crash to reboot upon startup.

Anyway, I now have it configured and working with my original primary
hard drive on one channel and the two CD drives on the other. This
seems to be working fine.

However, I can't add the slave hard drive onto the first IDE channel
without problems.

I'm wondering if anyone knows what might cause this problem. Is it the
motherboard going bad, is it a Windows XP problem, or possibly a
hardware problem (I don't think this is the problem).

Anyway, thanks for any advice.

A little about my computer: ECS K7S5A (I believe this is the MB), an
AMD 1.4GHZ processor, 256MB RAM, both HDs are WD 40GBs (the second is
fairly new), Windows XP.

 

[philo]

I have two hard drives attached to my first IDE channel and two CD
roms attached to my second (a CD-rom and CDRW drive). Everything had
been working fine for quite a while, then suddenly one day, the drives
stopped showing up. I can't remember exactly what happened, but I
think the second hard drive didn't appear or one or two of the CD
drives. Anyway, I tried to resolve the problem with no luck. I have
tried switching around all the drives and switching master/slave
relationships, all with no luck--many configurations caused the
machine to crash to reboot upon startup.

Anyway, I now have it configured and working with my original primary
hard drive on one channel and the two CD drives on the other. This
seems to be working fine.

However, I can't add the slave hard drive onto the first IDE channel
without problems.

I'm wondering if anyone knows what might cause this problem. Is it the
motherboard going bad, is it a Windows XP problem, or possibly a
hardware problem (I don't think this is the problem).

Anyway, thanks for any advice.

A little about my computer: ECS K7S5A (I believe this is the MB), an
AMD 1.4GHZ processor, 256MB RAM, both HDs are WD 40GBs (the second is
fairly new), Windows XP.

try putting the slave drive on the 2nd ide
if it still does not work...the drive is probably bad

 

[Ken]

try putting the slave drive on the 2nd ide
if it still does not work...the drive is probably bad

I believe you could also have a bad IDE cable on the first IDE
controller if you are using the same cable when switching controllers.
(All this is predicated on the jumpers being correct for the Master and
Slave drives.)

 

[goofything]

I've tried multiple IDE cables with same results, the jumpers are
correct and I've tried just about every configuration of jumpers to
see if maybe there was some other way that would work--but no luck,
and I don't think the drive is bad because I am able to remove both CD
drives and put the second HD on the second IDE channel and that works.
It just doesn't work when all 4 things come together. This is what
made me think that maybe it's a motherboard problem. But, maybe it's a
Windows XP issue. I'm really lost.

Any other suggestions?

 

[goofything]

Any other thoughts or suggestions?

I've tried multiple IDE cables with same results, the jumpers are
correct and I've tried just about every configuration of jumpers to
see if maybe there was some other way that would work--but no luck,
and I don't think the drive is bad because I am able to remove both CD
drives and put the second HD on the second IDE channel and that works.
It just doesn't work when all 4 things come together. This is what
made me think that maybe it's a motherboard problem. But, maybe it's a
Windows XP issue. I'm really lost.

Any other suggestions?