Hard Drive Not recognized

[AL BE]

I had partially assembled pc with the hard drive and optical drive connect out of the case Windows xp just finished installing and every thing worked fine. So I disconnected the power and went to assemble the rest of the case, connected everything the same and now the bios will not recognize the hard drive or optical drive on the primary ide channel. It recognizes the optical drive on the secondary channel. I tried every combination of jumpers, cables and channels that I could think of and had no success. I know the hard drive works because I just tested it in an external enclosure on another pc. I cant figure out why it just stopped working. All I can think of is that there is something wrong with the primary ide controller, or maybe a boot sector problem? Would an Ide Controller IDE Controller fix the problem? Any suggestions would be much appreciated.

 

[mechBgon]

What brand and model are the hard drive and the motherboard?

 

[AL BE]

The Motherboard is a gigabyte GA-7VAX1394-A, and the hard drive is a western digital WD400

 

[mechBgon]

Ok good. If you haven't tried this yet, take the jumper cap off the WD400 completely and just leave it off. That sets it to its special Single Master mode. Put it on its own data cable without any other drives. This resolves a common issue with WD drives. Did it help?

If not, try taking the motherboard out of the case, lay it on cardboard, and threaten it a bit. Menace it with a full pitcher of water or something. Then try running the system with the motherboard outside the case like that, just in case it had been short-circuiting on something inside the case.

 

[AL BE]

I tried it with no jumpers on and it did not work. I received the computer from someone and it didn't have any drives or a power supply, and the screws on the motherboard are completely striped and i cant get it out. It was working laying on its side and then I assemble the drive bays and stood it up and it wouldn't recognize anything on the primary ide channel. which is very frustrating!

 

[mechBgon]

That does sound frustrating. If you happen to be using a smaller #1 Phillips screwdriver, hunt up a good #2 and see if you can persuade those screws to turn with the bigger #2 Phillips screwdriver. If the screws are the kind that have hex flats on the outsides of their heads, then you can also use a socket to turn them.

What I'm wondering, is if there might be a screw lodged between the case and the underside of the motherboard, shorting out your primary IDE controller, so if you can get the motherboard out, you can check whether that's the problem or not. If you can't get the motherboard out, prop the case up so the front of the case is on the floor, then try flexing the motherboard tray away from the motherboard, and see if any screws fall out when you widen the gap like that.

 

[Slowlearner]

Please be more detailed in your responses. It didnt work doesnt tell us anything. Did it post? Does it say no OS found? Does the bios see the hd?
If the pc works only in an abnormal position it means that that there may be so many other things wrong with it. The most painless way to test is the way mechBgon suggests, if the holes in the case (mb has no screws) are stripped it may be shorting out and new case may be needed. WD drives do have strange settings - single drive, master with slave, and it is very important to get the jumpers just right, otherwise you can spend an inordinate amount of time just identifying the problem.

 

[AL BE]

The hard drive is still not recognized during POST. I checked the jumpers and cables again and checked under the motherboard and everything was normal no screws or anything that would cause a short.

 

[Slowlearner]

In that case the primary ide channel may not be working? Have you tried a different drive cable? Does it work in the second ide channel?

 

[AL BE]

I have tried different cables. I cant get the hard drive to be recognized by the secondary ide channel but it does recognize a dvd drive.

 

[Slowlearner]

So the motherboard definitely has problems, that need to be looked at. You need to get hold of another hd, and see if it is recognized in either channel. You could also burn a UBCD4win cd (http://www.ubcd4win.com/) or knoppix Live CD, and use it to start the pc and see if they load, but this will help only if the bios recognizes the hd, if bios does not see the hd, then the mb is useless. I would not recommend purchasing the ide controller card, if both ide channels on the mb are defective, those cards are useful only if you want many drives on your system, but are often problematic with boot drives.

 

[AL BE]

I tried a knoppix cd and it recognizes the drive. I still cant figure out why it is not recognized during POST.

 

[Thien2810]

hi AL BE,

I have experienced the same problem just 2 weeks ago. I think your motherboard is the problem. How long has that Gigabyte motherboard is in use?

For my side, I first had the problem when I disconnected one of the 2 hard drives I have, one Maxtor and WD. I was trying to remove the Maxtor drive as it was whining irritatingly, and fearful of hard disk failure I moved out my data and disconnected it. I also have set my WD to master single, taking out the jumper. Then Windows XP would not boot up, saying disk boot failure.

The problem got worse a few days later, when my system shut down/restarted by itself. I started to swap out all components to isolate the problem..change the GPU, CPU, RAM, hard disks...I attempted to reinstall Windows XP on a new hard disk, but Windows setup says it could not find any hard disks to install into. Figure that it was the Gigabyte motherboard, so I went down to where I have brought it and swapped the motherboard after the technicians there got the same problem.

After installing the swapped/new motherboard, I found out that I could boot up my old XP in the WD drive without any problems. BTW, that motherboard was just 7 months old...

 

[AL BE]

The motherboard has been in use for about 3 years. I also think it is a motherboard problem.