[THFS]

I bought a new PC tonight, with a SATA drive that I've installed Windows on and an IDE drive. The IDE drive showed up during the Windows install, with both partitions appearing, and I can see them in My Computer. However, I can't access anything on the drives, instead I get an error message with something about an I/O device error. Booting takes around 10 minutes but when I unplug the drive I can boot in roughly 30 seconds.

Desperate for help, please guys. >_<

 

[THFS]

UPDATE: I tried using the IDE connector that was plugged into the CD drive and Windows booted quickly again, but it did an automatic CHKDSK and came up with the wonderful "an unspecified error has occurred" while checking the file indexes on the first partition. The drives show up in My Computer, but when I first tried accessing them everything froze up for a while and then I started getting multiple instances of this error:

"Windows was unable to save all the data for the file" and then the partition letter or a folder within that partition, including what I think is the master file table (E:\$Mft)?

Now I seem to be able to access my files, and music still plays so I don't think they're corrupted. I'm going to reboot and see if I get all the above errors again, but I'm backing up everything on the drive to my other drive first.

 

[telegramsam]

Check the jumper on the IDE drive and make sure it is set to Cable Select. Check all of your opticals as well. Seems like a device conflict....

 

[THFS]

The images on the Seagate website aren't loading, so I'm not sure how I should set the jumper for it to be in CS mode. Is there a standard setting or should I keep looking for the specific Seagate configuration?

 

[THFS]

One other thing, I'm confused about. Here's what I have right now:

SATA HD - Set as master
IDE HD - Set as slave
IDE CD-Drive - Set as master

As far as I know that should work, shouldn't it?

 

[telegramsam]

The SATA drive can't be jumpered, they configure themselves.

Look on top of the drive itself, you should see a little diagram of the jumper settings. If you're using an 80 wire IDE cable (as opposed to a 40 wire), set them both to CS.

Do you only have one IDE slot on your MOBO?

 

[MysticEyes]

but when I unplug the drive I can boot in roughly 30 seconds.

Which drive did you unplug?

SATA HD - Set as master
IDE HD - Set as slave
IDE CD-Drive - Set as master

I would assume anything on it's own channel should be set to Master, or if the drive is set to CS (cable Select) the end of the IDE cable. The HD should have a diagram on it on showing how to set the jumper for various configurations. Does your SATA drive appear as your C:/ drive?

 

[THFS]

I'm using a 40 wire IDE cable, is that a problem? The only reason I'm using this one is because the cable that came with my motherboard wasn't long enough for me to connect both the CD drive and the hard drive.

And yes, I only have the one IDE slot on my motherboard.

 

[THFS]

I unplugged the IDE hard drive. In the BIOS both IDE devices show up on the same channel, I think anyway. Yes, the SATA drive is C:. I'll have a look on top of the HD for the jumper settings, but what about my CD drive? How would I go about setting that to cable select?

 

[telegramsam]

If you're using a 40 wire cable, CS won't work.

Set the HDD to master and the optical to slave. If you have two IDE slots, plug one drive into each of them.

 

[MysticEyes]

I'm using a 40 wire IDE cable, is that a problem? The only reason I'm using this one is because the cable that came with my motherboard wasn't long enough for me to connect both the CD drive and the hard drive.

And yes, I only have the one IDE slot on my motherboard.

Get 80 wire cables.

 

[telegramsam]

Get 80 wire cables.

Still better advice.

 

[Rich-M]

I cannot imagine why you should move to cs. You had it jumpered correctly and if you change to cs, depending on where the hdd is, it may not boot at all. Mystic is right, the entire problem is probably the 40 pin cable. Rounded ide cables can be easily found at 24 and 36" and I am sure that would work for you.

 

[THFS]

Alright, I've made the 80 pin cable that came with the motherboard fit somehow, and now the HD is recognised and fully functional at full speed. However, I'm still having two problems.

1. My system fans (one in the front and one in the rear) have both completely stopped working. This happened somewhere along the way, not sure if it's related or not but I need to fix this.
2. Every time I boot Windows it does a consistency check on both partitions of the hard drive that was playing up, then reports no errors.

Any ideas for either problem?