Another HDD issue!

[Dean C]

*sigh* It has not been a good week for me and my hard-drives

The problem that I'm facing this time is that when I plug in one of my hard-drives into the motherboard, it causes my system to not recognize any of the attached hard-drives.

As soon as the HDD is no longer plugged in, everything works fine. I just find it really strange that when I plug it in, and boot into BIOS I can't see any of my drives, and consequently it doesn't boot.

Any ideas folks? I'm stumped

[Wayne Luke]

Make sure they are all pinned correctly. If they aren't then there can be conflicts preventing them from being recognized. Also make sure that the insulation on the cable is intact without drying or cracking being evident.

[hitmancode47]

The problem that I'm facing this time is that when I plug in one of my hard-drives into the motherboard, it causes my system to not recognize any of the attached hard-drives.

As soon as the HDD is no longer plugged in, everything works fine. I just find it really strange that when I plug it in, and boot into BIOS I can't see any of my drives, and consequently it doesn't boot.

I had a similar problem a few weeks back, check for any tears in the IDE cable and check the pin plugs as wayne said.

I ended up buying a new IDE cable, and it worked fine, check that first.

By the way:

I think you and your hard drives should have a private chat lol, seems like the second time they have broken/downed find out whats going on lol.

[Dean C]

I had a similar problem a few weeks back, check for any tears in the IDE cable and check the pin plugs as wayne said.

I ended up buying a new IDE cable, and it worked fine, check that first.

By the way:

I think you and your hard drives should have a private chat lol, seems like the second time they have broken/downed find out whats going on lol.

I've tried using a different SATA cable to no avail. I'll check the pins, but it's never been a problem in the past. The HDD has always been in this set up. Nothing has changed

[Dream]

Never had any problems with HDDs *knocks on wood*

[Floris]

Thankfully it's been going fine here too. Open mac pro case, slide in new drive, no cable nonsense or pin nonsense, and close case + boot and continue as is.

One possibility I can think of is perhaps the power supply not being able to pull this much hardware? Could it be the system boots but it can't power that channel any more on the second cable?

[ManagerJosh]

I've tried using a different SATA cable to no avail. I'll check the pins, but it's never been a problem in the past. The HDD has always been in this set up. Nothing has changed

What type of SATA drives are they? Are they SATA-2s? If so, does your motherboard support SATA-2?

[Dean C]

Thankfully it's been going fine here too. Open mac pro case, slide in new drive, no cable nonsense or pin nonsense, and close case + boot and continue as is.

One possibility I can think of is perhaps the power supply not being able to pull this much hardware? Could it be the system boots but it can't power that channel any more on the second cable?

I've tried unplugging a couple of other drives and then plugging that one in to no avail.

What type of SATA drives are they? Are they SATA-2s? If so, does your motherboard support SATA-2?

The one that causes nothing to be recognized is SATA1. My motherboard supports 1+2.

[Dean C]

Things are going from bad to worse. Now my new 1tb drive (which I'd already filled with the contents of one of my other failing drives), is showing up as an unformatted 7.8gb drive. I unplugged it and then plugged it in via a SATA -> USB adaptor and it shows up as a 32mb unformatted drive.

I've since tried the drive in a diffferent PC and it's also recognized as 33mb in the BIOS in that PC too.

What on EARTH is going on, and is it likely that I can recover the data that was on the drive?

[SNN]

It's not likely that you'll be able to recover the data should it have formatted itself.
If you're running windows xp, go to start, run.. and type diskmgmt.msc
Do you see the full 1TB there, with only 33 MB formatted there?

[Dean C]

It's not likely that you'll be able to recover the data should it have formatted itself.
If you're running windows xp, go to start, run.. and type diskmgmt.msc
Do you see the full 1TB there, with only 33 MB formatted there?

I see the unformatted 8.8gb there.

[ManagerJosh]

I see the unformatted 8.8gb there.

The 1TB Drive is made by who?

[Dean C]

The 1TB Drive is made by who?

Samsung F1. It's been running less than 7 days.

[Floris]

I've been through this in 2005 when one after the other hardware on my system kept failing and i started to loose big chunks of data. It frustrated me daily and I was really glad when I got the powerbook so I at least had a stable system. Now in 2008 I FINALLY figured out what hdd was causing it and which hardware was buggin' up. So I have 1 drive left in it that's used by ubuntu server, and it's doing nothing else but run an ircd + log box as 'failback' irc server. And I still don't know why. Every drive I started to put into it goes out corrupted, even if I change cables or channels. And that sucks, because I had 8 drives in the box :/

[ManagerJosh]

Samsung F1. It's been running less than 7 days.

http://www.samsung.com/global/business/hdd/support/utilities/ES_Tool.html

Run ES-Tool and see what happens.