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The hard drive in question is a 120gb western digital slave IDE drive. Motherboard is asus p4p800 se, bios AMI. The other day my computer crashed and I narrowed it down to the hard drive causing it, it wouldn't post with it plugged in, so I removed it and windows booted fine. I was thinking it might be dying/dead so I put it in another computer, ran diagnostics, everything checked out, the drive is healthy. The problem lies with my BIOS refusing to even post with the drive plugged in.
I've tried switching ide cables, channels, power connectors, switching master/slaves around, reseting cmos, defaulting bios settings, just about everything I can think of and nothing.
The drive makes a slight "hissing" sound about 6 times, then click, then repeat, like it's not properly starting up. Sometimes the system will stay powered on, no display, but keyboard lights going on/off. sometimes it'll shut itself off during this process.
The one anomaly I found is it was recognized ONCE when I removed the drive from the case and held it in my hand and tried booting, but I have not been able to accomplish this in a long time.
As I said I have confirmed that the drive works in other systems.
Will other drives work when connected to the same channel? If so that would eliminate the controller. You state that in another computer everything checked out. Does that mean you can read the files on the drive in question?
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Yes, other drives are continuing to work in the computer in question on the same channel. And yes this drive is 100% functional in another computer.
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Do you have ONE IDE channel or TWO? If one, is the other IDE drive an optical drive? If so, is it working when connected by itself? If TWO, do other drives work when connected to the channel in question?
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I have 2 channels. A dvd drive is on the other channel, but as I said in OP I tried putting the sketchy drive on the 2nd channel with no luck.
The master drive is still working on the 1st channel, which both drives were on.
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Is the Master boot drive also a WD 120GB by chance? I once had TWO identical drives installed in a system and sometimes only one would initialize on bootup. If you PSU is failing and the drive in question is marginal, that could explain things. Boot to the BIOS and check PC health to see what the 12V readings are. How about trying to boot with ONLY the drive in question connected. I understand this is probably not a bootable drive. May get you to a NO system disk screen.
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The master is a 40gb seagate.
The voltage readings - as far as I can tell, are fine.
I've also tried to boot with only the drive connected, still nothing.
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When this drive was connected to a different system did you happen to notice during the POST screens if this drive was being properly identified by model.
I have seen folks use mounting screws that were much too long to mount HDs. I don't know what damage that could cause, if any.
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I did not pay attention to post in the other system.
and I used the proper mounting screws.
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Well, in my mind the drive is still in question.
One thing just came to mind. You cleared the CMOS. Was that performed while the computer was unplugged from the wall? If not it, won't clear, as power is being applied.
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Have you tried the same 4 pin power plug to
the hard drive each time?If so try plugging in another power plug from the power supply
to the hard drive.
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Disconnect the 40 gig master and put the 120 in its place. Verify its jumpers are correct. For most WD drives a single drive on a cable is 'no jumper' whereas two drives are jumpered master/slave.
Does the PC now post and see the drive?
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I've already tried having no other drives connected but this one, and having this one set master with no luck.
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So at one time this drive was working OK in the computer when, with no changes--without the case even being opened--it stopped posting when the drive was connected? And you've swapped cables?
The only time I've seen a good drive stop a PC from posting is if its cable is connected backwards. But that doesn't sound like your situation. I guess the drive has a problem your Asus board is sensitive to but which the other PC ignores.
Or it's a power supply problem, as already mentioned.
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