Bios not recognizing hard drive

[dsimek]

I recently purchased an ASUS A7V333 motherboard and built a new system for the first time. After I got the system up and running, I tried to connect my old hard drive (to copy files) while the system was on and saw sparks when I touched the power supply cable to the drive. The screen filled with lines and I shut the system off immediately. Big mistake!

After starting up again, I noticed that the bios did not recognize my new hard drive anymore. The other boot devices (CD, floppy, etc.) were recognized and labeled correctly in the bios. I ran PC Mark 2002 and noticed that my new hard drive scores were lower than another person with the same drive (WD 1000JB). I called the vendor and they said to try hooking up the hard drive to the secondary IDE port (where my CD is). If the secondary port sees my hard drive, they will send me a new primary port. I am a little confused here. If the port was bad, would the hard drive still function at less than optimal performance? My hard drive still works, but it’s not listed in the bios under boot devices. What do you think I should do? Any advice is greatly appreciated. Thanks for your help.

Dale

[Cricket]

Hi dsimek,

Something obviously got damaged when you tried to install the hard drive while the system was on. Whether it was just the hard drive, the motherboard or both is something you have to determine.

Do you have access to another computer? If you do, try swapping the hard drives around. If the hard drive shows up okay in the other PC and appears to perform normally, then the new motherboard IDE controller got damaged.

If the hard drive doesn't get detected or perform normally, then something on it got fried.

Try another hard drive on the new motherboard too just to verify if the IDE controller is working okay.

If the problem shows up in every configuration you try, the hard drive and motherboard got damaged.

I don't understand what the vendor meant when they said they would send you a new primary IDE port. That's something that can't be replaced...unless they plan to send you a controller card or a new motherboard.

Remember to always turn off your system before you connect or install any hardware device...mice, keyboard, speakers included.

Cricket