[superspiff]

i almost had a disaster when my pc wouldnt boot up normally. on the black screen with lots of text, below the "tranferring DMI data" (or stuff like that) it didnt say "boot from floppy" or any of the normal stuff. instead it had symbols that looked like "YoYo." i checked the floppy drive and all the cables inside the thing and it was all fine.

i called my uncle and he asked if the hard drive was making noises. i said the master drive (a maxtor) wasnt, and he said that means its not spinning and its dead and probably unrecoverable.

i went into o-[bleep] mode and started switching cables and stuff around like an idiot. i later noticed that my slave drive (an old, crappy ibm) was still working., so i switched that to the master, and switched the maxtor to the slave, and it booted up normally.

fortunately it worked, and i could get back into the maxtor drive for some reason, so i could back up all my really important stuff onto an external drive, but i my pc is now really slow because the ibm drive is reeallly messed up (it makes wierd scratching noises and loads stuff so slow).

so in a nutshell, the maxtor didnt work when it was the master drive, but it did work when it is the slave

is this a virus or just a mechanical problem with the drive or whatnot?

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If the IBM drive is failing it may be causing problems for the Maxtor too. Have you tried with the Maxtor as master and no slave? Sounds like time to run diagnostics on both drives before wasting too much effort.

[Tyger]

If the IBM drive is failing it may be causing problems for the Maxtor too. Have you tried with the Maxtor as master and no slave? Sounds like time to run diagnostics on both drives before wasting too much effort.

[Samm]

Welcome to G2G superspiff

I've come across this problem before but can't remember exactly what causes it!
Try Tiger's suggestion, especially in regards to running a hard disk diagnostic. (You can download ones from Maxtor & IBM)

At a guess, I would suggest the problem is either a corrupted boot record on the maxtor drive or a problem with the IDE cable. (The fact that the system boots ok when you swapped the drives around, suggests it could simply have been a loose connection on the IDE cable).

If it is a corrupted boot record however, then this may indicate a virus so I would also advise that you update your anti-virus scanner & run it over both of the drives (remember to include the boot record in the scan if it asks).

[happyrock]

if possible backup everything you can in case the drive commits suicide..

[wannabe1]

Hope you all don't mind me poking my nose in here for a minute...

Many of the newer drives are shipped with the jumpers set to Cable Select (CS). In most older machines, this will not work when the drive is used as the master...particularly if there is another drive in the machine. Check the jumpers. On the newer Maxtor drive, the jumper needs to be set as Master (MA) and set to Slave (SL) on the IBM drive. Use new IDE ribbons for the drive if you can with the master connected to the end connector.

Install only the maxtor drive thusly configured and power up...does the drive detect in BIOS and spin up?

[happyrock]

Hope you all don't mind me poking my nose in here for a minute...

Many of the newer drives are shipped with the jumpers set to Cable Select (CS). In most older machines, this will not work when the drive is used as the master...particularly if there is another drive in the machine. Check the jumpers. On the newer Maxtor drive, the jumper needs to be set as Master (MA) and set to Slave (SL) on the IBM drive. Use new IDE ribbons for the drive if you can with the master connected to the end connector.

Install only the maxtor drive thusly configured and power up...does the drive detect in BIOS and spin up?

poke your nose wherever you like.. ...
just a heads up...if you are going to use cable select...you must use a 80 wire 40 pin cable.....a 40 wire cable does not "see" cable select....

Edited by happyrck, 10 March 2007 - 08:51 AM.