Bios issues for my hard drive!

[RandoM cRASh]

hi!

I recently had troubles with data loss from my primary slave 120gb IBM HD. I since bought a new Maxtor w/8mb cache 120gb and retreaved the data off my old HD.

However I have come up with problem which i remember happened to my old HD before it became corrupted.

It happens when i have all my drives connected, in the following configuration:

P Master = 80gb Maxtor w/8mb cache
P Slave = 120gb Maxtor w/8mb cache
S Master = Samsung CDRW
S Slave = LG DVD

all jumpers are set to either master or slave, and this config. has served me well for the past 2 years with different equipment.

What happens is the new (and the old) 120gb HD show an abnormal string in BIOS, incomplete with a load of $ and other misc. signs added to the drive string.

What happened with my old 120gb HD was that this happened a few times but i didn't think much of it (!!) and the HD eventually became corrupted.

I can use the new HD perfectly as a secondary slave with no cd drives present. But on the primary slave, and with cd drives present, BIOS doesn't record the drive name properly! It worked on Primary slave IDE before i reconnected the cd drives, but now it comes up with the abnormal string each time i try it!

naturally i've disconnected it for the time being.

Is this a cable problem or something different? Pls help!!

 

[Greeno]

Update your BIOS, its probable there's a fix out, thats certainly odd.

Why not post your board type if you're unsure of what you need or what to do with it.

If you're unsure of your mobo of course you can head over to http://www.sisoftware.net/ and get sandra this'll help.

 

[Nic]

It is possible for a faulty cable to cause this problem, so why don't you try another cable and see if it goes away. It could also be that the two devices on that cable don't get along with each other, or their jumper settings are incorrect. Why don't you do some testing and find out what the cause is?

 

[ToRN]

Not quite your quesion , but your hiërarchy of your drives is not optimal. I would suggest to put your DVD slave on your master hd and your slave hd as slave on the CDRW. The master controls the slave, so when you copy on the fly you loose some performance when your readdrive is as slave on your CDRW. Your setup works, but you'll get some performance extra by changing it as suggested.

 

[Nodsu]

It can also be caused by poor power supply: while the drives are spinning up, they draw a lot of power and the electronics may not respond to the BIOS properly. Although, a 300W PSU should be able to spin up 2 HDS with no problems unless you happen to have discs in your CD/DVD drives.