It could be HD failure.  I've had Seagate drives (particularly the 8GB ones)
that would have problems with the spindles, and wouldn't spin the first time
they were turned on.  If I turned the system on and whacked them real hard
on the top at the same time they powered up, the spindle would un-stick and
it would run.  The days were numbered on them, though, and I quickly copied
the data off and put them in file 13.  I learned from the first one, the
hard way, that they were due for failure.

If the primary drive is not detected, chances are the secondary one will not
be either, because it is jumpered as a slave and not a master, and no master
was found.  That "could" be why you're not seeing the second drive.

The other possibility is that the IDE port is going bad.  The simple and
cheap way to test this is add a PCI IDE controller and boot off of it.  If
the problem goes away, you know that was the problem, and the fix is already
in the machine.  If not, you are only out about $20, and they're handy to
have around anyway, just in case you want to stick a few more drives in a
system and are out of IDE ports.

Good luck!

Kyle Elmblade
Distinct Computer Solutions
Sales - Upgrades - Training - Consulting
[log in to unmask]
"A closed mouth gathers no foot"

From: "alanpriol" <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Friday, November 09, 2001 11:38 PM
Subject: [PCBUILD] Hard disk failure


> During the last three days when booting up the computer on several
> occasions has failed to detect the two hard drives and of cause
> displayed the message "HARD DRIVE FAILURE INSERT SYSTEM DISK etc".
> Shutting down and waiting a few minutes I would get a successful
> startup. Am I looking at a possible Hard disk failure? The cables were
> checked for possible displacement but there was no problem there. Also,
> would the Secondary hard drive not be detected if the Primary one was
> failing?
> My system is a P111 667 on a Gigabyte M/B with 640MB SDRam.
> Any help would be greatly appreciated.
>
> Alan Priol

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