[SOLVED] IDE drives not detected in bios

wonderboylv · 06-01-2009, 02:00 AM

I have been running 2 seagate 200GB IDE drives, one maxtor 300GB IDE drive, and one 320GB seagate SATA drive on my system. The two 200GB IDE drives, until recently, were on a PCI IDE card. This computer has ran like this for a year. I have partitioned the SATA drive into a 100GB for windows and a 200GB for storage and backup. Here's what I have running in my system:

MSI 945 Neo5
1 intel core2 2.4 GHz, 1033 FSB
2 corsair DDR2 533MHz 1 GB ram sticks
1 Nvidia 7600 GS PCI-E video card
1 Ultra X connect VS power supply 700W 40A 12v single rail

My IDE drives started going offline fairly recently, first to go was a 200GB on the PCI card, then the other one. Yet somehow they would regain function if I tinkered by unplugging and replugging them, but they continued to fail and started to fail more often. I switched the PCI IDE card around and replaced all of the IDE data cables. Besides offering a day of relief this didn't work, so I removed the card and set up my single IDE cable on the 300GB and one of the 200 GB. This worked briefly, then the motherboard stopped detecting the 200GB shortly before it stopped detecting the 300 GB. I fiddled with the jumper settings bringing the master and slave settings into the mix and the bios detected the drives. But upon restart the drives went away, so I double and triple checked all the plugins, noting that a 120mm system fan on the same powerline as the IDE devices was running without fail. The hard drives showed up again but disappeared upon reboot. My 320GB SATA has not failed once during all of this and the computer is running cool and being very dependable otherwise.

Only things I can think of are bios errors, a faulty IDE on the motherboard, or an extremely selective power supply issue. The last of the three being the long shot. My power supply has multiple plug points for hard drive and peripheral wires and I've mixed them and switched them up quite a bit. Anyone have any ideas on where I should start tackling this?

wonderboylv · 06-01-2009, 02:44 AM

*update* flashed the bios and unplugged and re-plugged IDE cables. The hard drives seem to be working, and they show up in windows no problem. Might fail again, I'll post again if it (inevitably?) does.

Tumbleweed36 · 06-01-2009, 04:45 AM

Glad you are up and running, have a nice week.

06-01-2009, 02:00 AM	#1 (permalink)
wonderboylv Registered User Join Date: Jun 2009 Posts: 6 OS: Windows XP SP2 april 2007	[SOLVED] IDE drives not detected in bios I have been running 2 seagate 200GB IDE drives, one maxtor 300GB IDE drive, and one 320GB seagate SATA drive on my system. The two 200GB IDE drives, until recently, were on a PCI IDE card. This computer has ran like this for a year. I have partitioned the SATA drive into a 100GB for windows and a 200GB for storage and backup. Here's what I have running in my system: MSI 945 Neo5 1 intel core2 2.4 GHz, 1033 FSB 2 corsair DDR2 533MHz 1 GB ram sticks 1 Nvidia 7600 GS PCI-E video card 1 Ultra X connect VS power supply 700W 40A 12v single rail My IDE drives started going offline fairly recently, first to go was a 200GB on the PCI card, then the other one. Yet somehow they would regain function if I tinkered by unplugging and replugging them, but they continued to fail and started to fail more often. I switched the PCI IDE card around and replaced all of the IDE data cables. Besides offering a day of relief this didn't work, so I removed the card and set up my single IDE cable on the 300GB and one of the 200 GB. This worked briefly, then the motherboard stopped detecting the 200GB shortly before it stopped detecting the 300 GB. I fiddled with the jumper settings bringing the master and slave settings into the mix and the bios detected the drives. But upon restart the drives went away, so I double and triple checked all the plugins, noting that a 120mm system fan on the same powerline as the IDE devices was running without fail. The hard drives showed up again but disappeared upon reboot. My 320GB SATA has not failed once during all of this and the computer is running cool and being very dependable otherwise. Only things I can think of are bios errors, a faulty IDE on the motherboard, or an extremely selective power supply issue. The last of the three being the long shot. My power supply has multiple plug points for hard drive and peripheral wires and I've mixed them and switched them up quite a bit. Anyone have any ideas on where I should start tackling this?

06-01-2009, 02:44 AM	#2 (permalink)
wonderboylv Registered User Join Date: Jun 2009 Posts: 6 OS: Windows XP SP2 april 2007	Re: IDE drives not detected in bios update flashed the bios and unplugged and re-plugged IDE cables. The hard drives seem to be working, and they show up in windows no problem. Might fail again, I'll post again if it (inevitably?) does.

06-01-2009, 04:45 AM	#3 (permalink)
Tumbleweed36 Asst Manager Hardware Join Date: May 2005 Location: USA Posts: 19,662 OS: XP Professional	Re: IDE drives not detected in bios Glad you are up and running, have a nice week. __________________ ---------- I don't receive email notifications of replies to subscribed threads. (Internet provider policy) Therefore, if I don't respond to your post within 24 hours, please send me a reminder PM and include the link to your thread.