Asus K8N not detecting IDE HDD Master!

[Marke522]

Hi, thanks for reading.

I just built a new computer ( Asus K8N, AMD 64 3000+, 2*512 Kingston DDR 400 ) for my brother in law, using some old parts from a pc he took home from work. It was an HP something or other, I'm using the opticals, floppy, and hdd, it's a Quantum something or other, 30 GB.

Everytime I boot, it finds the hdd as a slave, and asks me to press F1 to Resume. I did that, installed XP SP2, and everything worked just fine. Installed all the drivers off the Asus cd, updated it a few times off the internet, installed AVG and ZA, and it works fine, fast too. But everytime I reboot or start I have to press F1 to Resume, then it works.

The BIOS finds the Quantum, but only has a slave, there are no other hdd's. The opticals are on a different IDE cable, and on the Sec IDE. The hdd is alone, jumpers have been set to Master, CS and no jumper. Tried a different IDE cable, made sure it's in Pri IDE, still same strange issue.

I had some case fans plugged into the molex with the hdd, now it's alone, still same strange issue.

I'm baffled, any ideas????

Thanks, Mark.

[glc]

It has to be a jumpering or a cable issue. Have you disabled the SATA controllers in the bios?

[Marke522]

I thought about that too, but I couldn't find where to do that, it was close to midnight, I was tired, and probably staring right at it.

Is there anyway that the hdd is made to work only with an HP board?

I had a friend tell me once he took his Dell apart and could only use the drive as a slave for a different build.

[glc]

Have you tried zero filling the drive in case it has a proprietary partition?

[Marke522]

No, I didn't do a zero fill, but I did format NTFS with the XP disc, when I installed windows. There's 29.something gigs availiable and I never saw any mention of a D when I was going through the install.

Just got home, I'll disable the SATA controller in a few minutes.

Edit --

Hey, I was in MaxBlast3, just thought I would put it in and play a bit, I know it's a Quantum, and it found the drive as a BIOS drive in an unknown controller.

The Primary Master and Salve are blank. Strange.

[Marke522]

Ok, just found out that Quantums are now serviced by Maxtor. That might explain why my MaxBlast worked.

But it didn't solve the problem after a format.

Using killdisk now, doing a one pass zeros.

Taking a bit of time, have to see if that works.

If not, then he allready said he'll buy a SATA Caviar. Newegg has the 80GB for only $53 right now.

He needs to place an order for a video card anyway, I gave him an MX-4000, but he wants to play COD 2.

Edit --

GOT IT!!!!!!

I did the zero fill, and still had the same problem, darn, now to install windows again. Same problem. Finally decided to try something strange, and put the jumper where it says it will be slave. BOOTS!!! AND is now recognized as MASTER!! So strange. I guess I shouldn't believe everything I read. :P

[glc]

I bet you are looking at the jumper block upside down.

[Marke522]

That is a possibility, but at least it all works now.

I've never made that mistake before, but I guess there's a first time for everything.

Thanks for your replies.