HD is acting up.

[untruehero]

I recently bought a new 120 Maxtor drive to replace my old 20 gig that was running my system. I'm now running 2 120 gig Maxtor HD, on a AMD athlon xp 2500+ with 512 ram, Abit mobo with an Abit Geforce4 MX 440 agp 8x vid card. Lately I have been leaving my cpu on over night and during work and when I come back it is frozen, this happens all the time. But more recently it has been freezing will i have been working on it. It usually happens when I try to explore my slave drive, i go to open it and all the sudden it wont open and then my other programs slowly freeze till the whole machine freezes...usually a restart will fix it but sometimes on restart the slave isnt recognized. if i unplug and replug it in it usually works...does this sound familar to anyone...thanks in advance..

scott

[delta013]

Try using a different cable IDE (or whatever your using). Also make sure the drive is straped as a slave. If none of that works and your drive is under warrenty, try contacting Maxtor and asking for a replacement.

Delta013

[untruehero]

hey delta013 i was thinking it might be the cable, it is striped as a slave drive i know that for sure...maybe ill order a new cable and see how that goes.

scott

[glc]

You should be using an 80 wire Ultra ATA cable and using Cable Select jumpering, not master/slave. Just to make sure, download and run Powermax diagnostics on the drives.

[untruehero]

ill try that prog glc, i am running cable select, and im running the cables the original cables that came with the mobo.

scott

[delta013]

Originally Posted by glc You should be using an 80 wire Ultra ATA cable and using Cable Select jumpering, not master/slave. Just to make sure, download and run Powermax diagnostics on the drives.

You have to use cable select on Ultra ATA drives? I've never heard that. I've been running an UltraATA drive in my desktop for over 4 years on master/slave with no problems. Could you explain more glc? Thanks.

Delta013

[glc]

I said "should" - not "have to" - 80 wire Ultra ATA cables are wired for Cable Select. You "may" use master/slave, but you "cannot" override the cable select positioning with jumpers, you still have to connect the right connectors in the right place.

[delta013]

So you are saying that where I put them on the cable will determine which is the master even if I strap them? I knew they could support cable select, but I didn't know it was forced.

Delta013

[glc]

If you strap them wrong, your performance may suffer and there may be recognition problems.

[delta013]

Well guess I just learned something then. A+ book didn't say anything about this.

:Throws book out window:

Delta013