The mystey of the disappearing, WD 250gb Drive

[John]

OK, here goes:
I have an ASUS P4T533 C.
I bought a 200gb Wester Digital Special Edition a while back. This
drive is the master on the first IDE channel. I used the WD tools
prep the drive to be my boot drive and discovered I only had 137gb.
I then found out about the limitation on this website and started
my process to fix it.

I went to the ASUS web site and found that I already have the right
BIOS for the larger drives. I also wanted to use the normal IDE
controller rather than the one that came with the drive. The XP I had
copied from the old drive had been fully updated so I couldn't figure
out why my drive wasn't prepped to the full size.

I then bought a Wester Digital 250gb special edition drive and made it
the slave on the second IDE channel, then disconnected all the other
drives. I wanted to test my WinXP Pro SP1 slipstream disk and
everything worked just fine and I had a 237gb drive. Encouraged by
this sucess, I did the same procedure to the 200gb drive to get all of
it prepped. I then plugged back in my 200gb WD SE boot drive and used
the WD tools to copy my old boot drive to the WD drive and that seems
to go fine.

So, what do I have now? The 200gb drive boots just fine but the 250gb
drive sometimes does not appear upon powerup (the displays shows IDE
1, slave as empty). Doing a quick reset shows the drive there. Once
the drive is there, I can access things. I haven't even tried to see
if its not there after bootup. I did reformat the 250gb drive so its
now empty but that problem persists.

Any ideas?

 

[Rod Speed]

OK, here goes:
I have an ASUS P4T533 C.
I bought a 200gb Wester Digital Special Edition a while back. This
drive is the master on the first IDE channel. I used the WD tools
prep the drive to be my boot drive and discovered I only had 137gb.
I then found out about the limitation on this website and started
my process to fix it.

I went to the ASUS web site and found that I already have the right
BIOS for the larger drives. I also wanted to use the normal IDE
controller rather than the one that came with the drive. The XP I had
copied from the old drive had been fully updated so I couldn't figure
out why my drive wasn't prepped to the full size.

I then bought a Wester Digital 250gb special edition drive and made it
the slave on the second IDE channel, then disconnected all the other
drives. I wanted to test my WinXP Pro SP1 slipstream disk and
everything worked just fine and I had a 237gb drive. Encouraged by
this sucess, I did the same procedure to the 200gb drive to get all of
it prepped. I then plugged back in my 200gb WD SE boot drive and used
the WD tools to copy my old boot drive to the WD drive and that seems
to go fine.

So, what do I have now? The 200gb drive boots just fine
but the 250gb drive sometimes does not appear upon
powerup (the displays shows IDE 1, slave as empty).

Which 'displays' ? Do you mean thats what you see on
the black bios screen at boot time or within XP itself ?

Doing a quick reset shows the drive there. Once
the drive is there, I can access things. I haven't
even tried to see if its not there after bootup.

Presumably that means that the earlier comment was
about what was on the black bios screen at boot time.

I did reformat the 250gb drive so its
now empty but that problem persists.

Any ideas?

How have you got the two drives jumpered ? I'd normally have
them jumpered cable select and use a cable select 80 wire
ribbon cable in that particular situation. If you have got that config,
I'd try another cable, it may well have an intermittent problem.

In other words it may have nothing to do with the
137GB problem at all and is just another flakey cable.

If a different cable doesnt fix it, try one of the other power
connectors for the 250GB drive. The metal tunnels that the
pins go into can open up a bit and not make good contact
with the pin and that can see a drive be visible at times and
not at other times on repeated reboots. Try a power connector
from one of the other cdrom type drives to test that possibility.

 

[John]

How have you got the two drives jumpered ? I'd normally have

them jumpered cable select and use a cable select 80 wire
ribbon cable in that particular situation. If you have got that config,
I'd try another cable, it may well have an intermittent problem.

In other words it may have nothing to do with the
137GB problem at all and is just another flakey cable.

If a different cable doesnt fix it, try one of the other power
connectors for the 250GB drive. The metal tunnels that the
pins go into can open up a bit and not make good contact
with the pin and that can see a drive be visible at times and
not at other times on repeated reboots. Try a power connector
from one of the other cdrom type drives to test that possibility.

That's what did it. I decided to purchase some new, rounded cables
and hooked them up. Everything is fine now. THANKS.