I need some help here. My PC, which I've recently tried to update by adding a 80gb hard drive to compensate for /t killing my hard drive space, won't work. The usual setup of my PC has been one master, one slave on the Primary IDE, and the DVD burner set to master on the Secondary IDE.
When I try to set the 3rd hard drive as slave, or as master, while changing the DVD burner to master/slave as required, the PC never gets past BIOS as it always fails to detect any one of the hard drives. And now, my PC refuses to work with more than two drives! Does the problem lie with my 350W power supply, motherboard, or the hard drives themselves?
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Anonymous2005-09-06 3:28
SWAP A PSU
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Anonymous2005-09-09 2:03
most HD'd dont like working together.buy an IDE card and attach that seperate.
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Anonymous2005-09-09 3:33
>>3
Utter bilge. Where'd you get that ridiculous idea? I've had anything up to three IDE drives (and a CD/DVD drive) connected to the on-board IDE interface with no problem - you just have to have a PSU that's up to the job, and to make sure your jumpers are set correctly.
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Anonymous2005-09-09 7:54
>>3 clearly doesn't know how to set jumpers on HDDs to cableselect or slave/master. I'm with >>2 and >>4--- verify your PSU kicks out sufficient juice.
Both speak the truth. Also, it might be worth swapping around the drives after you set the jumpers to cable select.
Finally, also make sure that the PSU connectors on the HDDs are REALLY plugged in. I had a panic when my primary media storage drive didn't power on after I swapped it; the Molex was off by a couple of millimieters.
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Anonymous2005-09-11 5:33
Alright, thanks. Guess the PSU is acting up. But, it acted up again a while ago, and this time, while the POST screen was loading and auto-detecting the hard drives, it just suddenly went blank then booted normally. Yikes...might be a mobo problem too...
Anyway, can you recommend a good PSU that's definitely proven to be reliable? Preferrably less than $50.
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Anonymous2005-09-11 5:57
Preferrably less than
And therein lies your problem.
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Anonymous2005-09-11 7:46
>>7
Yeah reliable ones tend to be rather expensive, especially when they're expected to function on America's flaky power grid.
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Anonymous2005-09-11 19:22
Ouch. So what's the best I could buy that won't empty my wallet?
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Anonymous2005-09-11 19:42
Buy a DVD recorder, some Taiyo Yudens, and backup your data often. Keep your OS free of bloat so it works fast and loads less crap/has a larger file cache (esp Windows which is a good performer in this department). It's the cheapest of all ^_^.
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Anonymous2005-09-11 23:00
Ok...now this is weird. I've always used 80-pin IDE cables for my PC, and all these problems have been occuring. Now, just for the heck of it, I tried out some 40-pin IDE cables I had lying around...and now it works! 3 hard drives + DVD burner are now functioning just fine, without any conflicts or problems at all!
WTF? So it looks like the IDE cables were the problem after all. I thought 80-pin IDE cables were better than the 40-pins? What could have been happening here?
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Anonymous2005-09-12 2:57
What should be wrong with the PSU?
I got a 230W PSU and it powers two optical drives and 4 harddisks just fine.
(GO GO PIII POWAHHH!)
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Anonymous2005-09-12 3:55
Wattage alone is no guarantee of a well-functioning PSU. It depends on how much of that wattage can be supplied to each of those outputs, how stable and clean that power is, and a host of other factors too.