IDE HDD / Motherboard Problem?

[jthoske]

Epox 8k3a (no RAID)
WD 1200JB + WD 800JB HDDs

I think my problem lies in my motherboard, but I am asking a few outside opinions.
The Epox motherboard has always given me a few small problems, like one of my USB plugs does not work on it, and the I/O panel does not light the front lights on the case.

My problem is with my IDE setup and my HDDs. The board has primary / secondary ATA/100 hookups only. On the Primary, I had my 800JB with my OS on it as master, and 1200JB as slave, used for storage only. Secondary has always worked fine- it houses a 24x CDRW, and a 16x DVD-ROM.

I turned my PC on tonight, after it worked fine ALL day long, and it kept restarting right after it checked the RAM, and began to load the BIOS / POST. So, I reset the BIOS, and after that- everything with the IDE is all screwed up.

The only way I have got anything to work is with just the 80gb OS drive plugged into master on primary, with "fail-safe defaults" in the BIOS selected. I have ruled out hte possibility of a bad IDE cable, and my CD drives still recognize and load fine.

I have hooked up both drives just about any way possible, still with no luck. The most interesting thing about it all is- I can just have the 800JB hooked up, and start into WinXP just fine under the fail-safe defaults in the BIOS, but if I reboot and switch it to optimized (loads more things, like USB, etc.) it had a HDD failure at the POST.

Any ideas? The MB is less than 6 months old- so I could probably RMA it-

Need more suggestions on how I can test to make sure it is the Motherboard, and not a bad HDD. Tomorrow I will plug both HDDs into a seperate PC to make sure they both work fine. I am pretty sure the 800JB is OK, and I am not sure about the 120GB.

Anything at all is appreciated, Thanks.

 

[jthoske]

Ok here is a little update to the situation:

I can successfully boot into Windows if the 80gb OS drive is on a chain with the CDRW, and the 120GB drive is with the DVD (split up the HDDs on seperate IDE channels)

BUT- still only works with "fail-safe" method, which disables USB and some other pretty little things I want.
Can I be 100% sure that it is the BIOS / MB by now?

If not- what can I do to test this?

I assume the only perfect solution would be to replace the MB.

 

[Zepper]

The only tips I can offer regard the strange jumper settings of WD drives and drive cabling. If this started happening after you made a change in the organization of your drives (change M/S settings, moved drive(s) to diff cables, etc., perhaps you need to recheck the jumper settings of your WD drives. They are about the only HDs that have diff jumper settings for Master-Stand Alone (only drive on the cable) and Master with Slave - that causes a lot of problems for people.
. A way to make that irrelevant is to use CS (Cable Select) instead. If both of your drive cables are 80-wire/40-pin (ATA 66 up) they are "supposed" to be CS cables (a good sign is if all 3 connectors on the cables are diff colors - blue, black, gray), be sure you have the proper end plugged into the mobo (usually blue) - check for printed info on the cable if diff color. You then just jumper all your drives to CS and put the drive you want to be (Primary/Master) on the end connector and the (Slave/Secondary) on each channel on the middle connector unless the cable is marked otherwise (Primary can be labeled as Pri/Mas/A, Secondary Sec/Sla/B). If only one of your cables is 80-wire, get a matching one for your other channel - makes for better stability on some mobos and ensures max performance from all your drives. Make sure your drive connectors are plugged in firmly and correctly and that no pins are bent. Hope something here helps.
.bh.