HDD BAD S.M.A.R.T. Error - I replaced the drive but I still get the same error!!

[mjohn]

A few months after I got my computer it started giving me an error saying: PRI MASTER HDD STATUS BAD: BACKUP AND REPLACE. (WD 80gb) I knew my drive was supposed to fail but I just kept using it and figured I would replace it when it did fail. I used it for ten months, getting the same error everytime it booted, and I had no other problems; when I tried to find a specific error code or something it said the drive was OK but still gave me a generic error. Two weeks ago it started not recognizing the drive and freezing after it had been running for about ten minutes; so I figured the drive had finally failed and I replaced it with a similar WD Caviar 80gb. While I was installing the OS on the new drive, all of the sudden the new drive dissappeared just like the old one used to. I rebooted, and got the same SMART error too. I heard somewhere that errors could be caused by faulty cables or something, so I replaced the IDE cable to the HDD. Now it can't find my optical drives.
Whats goin on? Any ideas? I don't want to mess with it again until I know whats wrong.

 

[SNGX1275]

Get or borrow a known good 80 pin ide ribbon. And be sure your jumpers are set properly on the drives connected.

There is a slight chance both drives really are messed up, but thats not real likely.

You *could* turn off S.M.A.R.T. I guess and save yourself some trouble. Until I got my newest comp a month or so ago I had never used S.M.A.R.T. I got by without it just fine

 

[mjohn]

Well, The IDE cable that I replaced it with is brand new and shouldn't be defective. I might turn off SMART if I can get it to boot properly. When I put in the new cable (the old one was kindof crappy), it would still detect the hard drives, but will not now detect anything on the other channel, which I did not touch. Why would this happen?

 

[SNGX1275]

if you are going to use CS then use it on both.

just set the hd to master and the cd to slave.

if you want to counter my argument for turning smart off, then I could pose the same crap back to you: why not try the hd by itself without the cd? "I don't see the point in" ....

Face the facts buddy, there are only a few possibilities here that I can see: Either you hooked up things wrong. Your IDE cables suck. You have bad luck in getting 2 bad drives. Your motherboard has dorked itself.

When your bios isn't detecting things its almost always a hardware issue, jumpers introduce the possibility of human error. Take a look at things again.

I have not heard of having one set to Master and the other to CS and it being acceptable. Perhaps you can, but I wouldn't have thought it as a "logical" way to do things.

 

[mjohn]

ok sorry, I think I said something wrong.
The only reason I was getting confused was because it would never have any trouble detecting the slave hdd, and that one worked perfectly the whole time. I rechecked the jumpers and the slave is set on slave, not cs; I was just remembering it wrong. Anyway, it was not the SMART error that was my main problem, it was when the drive would stop being recognized after it had been running for a while. The only reason I can't understand it is because the slave drive works perfectly the whole time, and it does the exact same thing for two drives. I don't have any way to run diagnostics on the drives at the moment, but I don't think its very likely to get two drives in a row with the same problem. I can't boot to anything because it will only recognize the hard drives, and neither one has anything on it.
Anyone have any other ideas?

 

[Nodsu]

Since it happens on both IDE channels with different IDE cables and different drives then you have a problem with the IDE controller.

Could be a power issue too. What happens when you attach only one hard drive and nothing else?

I trust you have set all the IDE devices in BIOS to be auto-detected?

And I hope you have plugged in all the cables the right way..

 

[mjohn]

Yeah, I was suspecting an IDE controller problem, but that would still not explain why the slave hard drive still works perfectly. Also, I don't think the cables or anything else is hooked up wrong, because my problem hasn't changed at all, except that the second channel dissappeared, but I didn't touch that one at all. Could changes made on one channel affect the other channel but not the one the changes are made to?