Asus A7N8X-E problems with two IDE drives together?

[cgloba]

OK....this one has me stumped.

I recently installed the following components:

Asus a7n8x-e deluxe m/b
Athlon XP-M 2500+
1 gb Samsung memory
Maxtor 160gb, Seagate 200gb hard drives
ATI Radeon 9800 Pro
Plextor PX-716A, TDK CDRW401240B optical drives

Here's my problem. Originally I had the Maxtor 160gb setup as my boot drive (master), and the Seagate is the slave drive. I installed a fresh copy of XP Pro on the Maxtor. After that was installed, I proceeded to install all the drivers (nforce, ati, etc.) Everything seemed to be working OK for about 10-15 minutes after startup. Then the system would lock-up entirely (can't even move the mouse, no ctrl-alt-del either). After doing a hard reset, got back into Windows, and after a few minutes the same thing would happen. I noticed that every time this would happen the hard drive access light on the case would be on when the computer locked up. After a few more resets, the computer would POST and then proceed to load Windows and lockup before Windows even started loading. I decided to install XP on the Seagate, make it the boot drive and the Maxtor slave. Windows installed no problem on the Seagate, got into Windows, and bam same problem. Then I tried to just run one HD at a time, both on the Maxtor 160gb and the Seagate, each with a fresh install of Windows. Running just the one drive at a time everything worked fine. I also tried hooking up an old Maxtor 60gb drive as slave with both the Maxtor 160gb and the Seagate as master and the same problems would happen. So I seem to have narrowed it down to the fact that when I run two IDE hard drives, the system locks up consistently. Keep in mind I've tried different IDE cables, both IDE channels on the motherboard, to no avail. Has anyone experienced a problem like this before????? I really need to solve this as running with just one HD sucks...

 

[imported_Kiwi]

Your summary of hardware leaves out at least one very critical part. Are you using a good quality power supply? If true, are you monitoring your system's temperatures? Two Hdd's in adjacent bays without an intake fan bringing in fresh air across them may be heating each other up intolerably. Separate them by one bay's worth of space, or more. If you have the air gap suggested between them, have you tried a different arrangement of cables yet?

(One optical and one Hdd per cable instead of two each of the same per cable.) In the distant past, there were some storage devices, including hard drives, that simply wouldn't cooperate with products from other factories. You had to use two Maxtors (*or whatever brand*) if you had a Maxtor with that particular failing, although I don't think I remember Maxtor drives ever having that problem back when I first started using those.


:beer:

 

[cgloba]

Thanks for the advice, but alas I've been through all of that. I'm using an Enermax 350w PSU which was powering my previous setup (the only thing different in that setup was the m/b and CPU)...in fact I used to run 3 hard drives with no problems. Hard drive temps are good.....hottest I've monitored them at is about 22C. They are installed in a Thermaltake Xaser III series case with two 80mm fans blowing right on them....so no problems there. I've tried running each hard drive as the master on each IDE channel, and no luck there either. I've also ran the Maxtools full read scan and the Seagate Seatools complete scan and both drives check out OK....

This has to be the most frustrating thing I've experienced in the last 20 years of building PC's....

 

[RickyG]

This is exactly the same frustrating problem that I have encountered. Same m/board but two Maxtor 250gb Diamondmax 10. I was having a problem with my old setup and put it down to Asus a7n8x deluxe 2.0 m/b getting old, so I replaced it with updated version, Asus a7n8x-e deluxe m/b , but still having probs. Not sure whether it's an Asus controller prob or Maxtor. The more I read about Maxtor on the forums, the more I am convinced that these drives are the problem.

My power supply (380w) came with my Antec Sonata case and has successfully supplied two to three hard drives in the past, but not since I bought the first Maxtor........

Like yourself, I have come to the conclusion that using two hard drives can cause major lock ups and am now fairly sure that problems arise from the Maxtor drives.

I will follow this post with interest and will return any suggestions I find elsewhere or any news of my experimentation. A bit rushed for time but I hope that this piece is of some interest.

 

[grooge]

I would try a new ATA100 ribbon cable for your HDD...

 

[junkyardDawg]

I've had this problem off and on for some time now with the same MB and similar HDD setup but only locked when loading windows. I'd always blamed it on a faulty driver or software install, (that's usually the only time I reboot) but now I wonder?

I will say that after a few boots it will eventually load windows and then everything is fine.

 

[Shuxclams]

I am having same issue... kind of with the freezing.


AN78X-E Deluxe Bios 1012 (Just changed to 1013)
AMD Sempron 2800+
MAXTOR 6L060L3
MAXTOR 6Y080P0
ATI Radoen 9600XT
NEC ND-3520A
LITE-ON LTR-48125W
ANTEC TRU430

The machine will run for a couple hours and then freeze solid as was described in first post, or sometimes run for 12-15 hours before it happens. I have noticed that it happens when its doing nothing or sometimes when I move the mouse. I have disabled about everything I can in MSCONFIG and it still happens.





SHUX

 

[carpenter]

I'm running an Asus A7N8X-E Deluxe with a WD 100Gb jb as master and a WD 250Gb jb as slave and haven't had any troubles. You did go to the drive management tool and format and enable the second drive?

 

[KGB]

To Everyone:

Try rolling the nV SW-IDE drivers back to the generic MS ones.

 

[ForumMaster]

My dad had the same prob. his specs:
A7N8X-E
AMD XP-M 2500+
Maxtor 80 giga
Older Maxtor 80 giga
1 gigabyte mushkin ram

anyway, his would also cause problems. eventually we solved the problem by moving the second drive to the cd salve cable. it worked. sometimes though, the computer would say that the drive was unformatted. then when i movied to my comp, my motherboard is a A7N8X-X,
it worked fine. although my master drive is western digital 80 giga. i think maxtor drives are just bad. although try moving the drive to cd-rom slave cable.