Hard Drive Problem

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Tbird94sc

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i am having a problem with my ibm hard drive. i will start my computer and it will not detect the drive. says press f4 to skip. ipower down the computer and immediatly power up again within a second of shutting it off. it now jumps into my bios telling me a cpu speed is invalid and i set it to 1533, which is the speed of the 1800+ chip. i save changes and exit and the bios now picks up the hard drive. ive done this a thousand times. it doesnt detect it the first time and finds it the second. ive run ibm's hd tests and it checks out fine. S.M.A.R.T says the hd is ok with no problems. ive done every test to the hd and it comes out with flying colors every time. does ne1 have any ideas as to why this happens????

ps. ive changed ide cables like 6 times and that didnt help either
 
Sounds like a motherboard issue... you may be loosing the settings in your bios due to a bad battery and it takes that second boot to get the right amount of power to the right places type thing. I'd start there anyway... battery.
 
I noticed your're using a promise ATA, card is your Drive connceted to it, or the onboard slots, if conencted to the card, tryign changing it to the onboard controllers instead. Other than that I sugegested checking the battery as well. I t woudl take some time to think of every possiblity but those are the 2 most prevelant ones i can think of.
Hope it helps
 
this is my main hd connected to the primary onboard ide controller and set as the master, dma enabled for all drives inside computer regardless of if on onboard connectors or promise ata card
 
Is it easy enough to actually trigger the sytem to display this effect??? (As in you don't need to leave the power off for a week before hand do you???)

If so you can try returnign to a bare-bones system... Mobo, RAM, Graphics Card and IBM HDD only... See if it does it in this state...

If not then start adding things back 1 by 1, when it breaks you have some idea as to whats causing it...

If the bare bones system does it then it's most likely a MB issue... Try the CMOS battery as suggested earlier.....

Next try ActiveSMART utility, see if any of your parameters are getting low on the disc.... (Doubtfull)
http://www.panterasoft.com/

I don't have much experience with this util yet as I only started using it yesterday... but that the time to death dates in it with a pinch of salt.... It's basically looking for trends of a deteriorating drive and can give a eta for a dead drive.. but it is inaccurate when you have only just started using it!

:D
 
mb is basically new. it has never happened before i used the ibm hd. i used the wd one before and did not have the prob. only the ibm does this. the ibm was purchased new and like i said, S.M.A.R.T and all of ibm hd tests say the drive is in 100% health
 
and it dosnt rely on time off. i can do it 1 hour from it turned off or 1 day or 1 minute. still does it
 
i had an IBM harddrive which did something very similar - also when I used a Promise UltraTX2/100 ata card.

I took it to the local computer shop where I'm mates with the owner... he tested it and said it had a power fault. Replaced it with a Quantum Fireball AS+ (same speed an access etc) and I've had no problems since.
 
Try going back to bare bones system then and see if you can isolate what is clashing with your IBM drive....

Thats what I'd do anyway.. Failing that I would return the IBM drive and buy a different brand.... Maybe Seagate Baracuda IV?
 
like i said before. i kno it is the hd. it has to be. when i hook up the wd as the main hd i never had and never get any problems. only the ibm. power fault huh? that sounds like u pegged the problem. im gonig to call ibm tonight and see what we can do. ill bet im not the only one with that prob. great job. thanks a lot. if anyone else has any ideas, keep em coming, but for now im flying with a power fault
 
power fault eh?

Sounds liek someone who didn't know what was causing the problem!

"Oh yeah yeah, sure it was a P.O.W.E.R fault!" ;-)

It's defo a prob with the drive.. or a configuration/compatability problem with the drive and another piece of hardware, just need to try and isolate it....

let me know how you get on with IBM's tech support.. If the are any good I may actually buy the IBM drive for y next HDD (iminent) otherwise I'll go ahead with my plan for a Seagate Baracuda IV (Nice and quiet!)
 
no m8, it actually was a power fault cuz it kept cutting out intermittently.

sarcastic **** :/
 
will do. but on another note, as i have proven wrong this time, but ibm hd's are the absolute best drives, HOWEVER, and thats a big HOWEVER, they are not the most friendly drives in the sense of compatability. they just dont work with some configurations, but on a plus note, they last the absolute longest out of everybody
 
thats my problem exactly. it cuts out intermittently even during windows sometimes. i thought it was a bad power supply considering i might have overloaded it with all of my hardware running on a 300w so i got a 450 but it still happens
 
mine went off during a format and came back on an the pc had obviously hung at bout 30% lol
lets jus say I wasnt amused.

went to the shop and they tested it. said the same thing was happening to them - the hdd was cutting out intermittently for no reason.

I only noticed the problem originally when I was using Quake III Arena online and it came to a map change and all I heard was the hdd cut off - it makes like a click sound - an then i heard it spin up again. I tried a different power pack but it didnt change anything... same problem occured. I reinstalled the comp cuz it was being stupid anyway - little did i know that the reason it was acting stupid was because it had been cutting out during installations of programs - hence things werent being installed correctly - errors on files etc and thats why programs were crashing.

On the reinstall, thats where the error came about.

But anyway, I totally agree that IBM harddrives are by far the best available - its got an excellent balance between speed and sound - seagates are quieter but i dont rate them in performance as highly as i do IBM. Meanwhile though, I'm happy with the Quantum... until the next upgrade ;)
 
IBM HD's

IBM hard drives are known to have a cold solder joint problem on the four pin power input connector. Get warranty for the unit!
 
try setting all ur hd's to cord select.. and then make sure ur master is on the primary ribbon cable.. and also make sure ur using the right one for master.. it should be either blue or a different color than the other one.
 
Aaaahhhhh..Well why didn't you say so!!!!!
Intermittent power!!!

I've had this on a Quamtum and a Fujitsu hard drive!

The problem wasn't with the HDD but with a cheap rubbish power supply.. basically the power connectors on the powersupply were cheap.. They would wear a litle over time.. I fixed it by crushing the pins a little to ensure they were a tight fit again!

But I cann't say this lead to the bios resetting! But it did result in many many windows crashes and also audiable power outages.. it was easy enough to diagnose, I wiggled the pwoer connector when the system was turned on... The HDD power down and up as I did so... See if it's the power connector... Try using a different connector....

It could be the connector ont eh HDD has stretched a little (it's effectivly a cylindrical type 'bucket' on the HDD and a pin on the power supply....) So the bucket sometimes opens up a bit.. but they are difficult to get too with pliars to compress a little again!

I do love it when someone says... My HDD isn't working it does funnies.. but failkt o say.. Oh yeah the thing power up and down randomly during use too! ;-)

Gosh could the two be connected???? (Also sarcastic!!!)


;)

See if that helps.. If not get another IBM hdd!

Oh ont he note of lasting the longest... I read something about IBM APPARENTLY having problems with their 'pxii dust' technology with the HDD's that resulted in a shortened HDD life... I think it was on.....
http://www.storagereview.com/
actually.... Have a peruse.. it was int eh main news section i think.... They may have a history of news releases!
Should be easy enough to find!
 
lol yeah ok... it would've helped to mention the intermittency.


I reinstalled Windows XP Professional yesterday, but thought to try the Promise ata card (mainly cuz I've seen someone else using one at last lol - so it must work). However it says "The drive you chose is not Windows XP compatible" (or something similar to that) when I got to where I set the partitions and go to format them. However, it wouldnt attempt to format them or anything.

I don't actually have a Windows XP driver for it to specify when it asks for them (It says press F6 for other scsi controllers or whatever). I've tried the Windows 2000 driver - same thing happens.

It's like it just wont accept any drive on that card. I've got (but not using at present - it didnt work, i whipped it out an installed me computer on crappy udma33 440bx chipset instead lol) a Promise Ultra/TX2 100 PCI controller card.

I've been in touch with promise over this, and they say "it should work, windows xp has drivers to support it" which is actually SO helpful (sarcasm). I think it's the last time I buy anythin from them lol.



As for the computer mentioned in this thread (there has to be a reason for my post to tie it in with this) - Try using a different battery - motherboards use a CR2032 battery (if im not mistaken?). You get them in some personal organisers (so borrow one from something like that lol). I remember a mate had an amd 300 which used to come up as 120mhz in POST sometimes... othertimes it would come up as 225mhz and rarely it would come up as 300mhz. You'd have to sit there rebooting over and over and over. Hence he left that computer on for weeks on end - Windows 2000 professional at the time lol.

Anyway, try a battery, if the harddrive is still in warranty, i recommend takin it back an wrapping it around the shop assistants neck (if thats possible wiv a little hdd).

g/l :)
 

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