WD HD not playing nice with other HDs, suggestions desired

[Guest JaseP]

My new box has a new Western Digital 80GB HD. I have it set as the primary drive on IDE line 1. The secondary IDE line holds the CD-Burner (which is another issue all together).

 

I'm running into weird conflicts with a second HD connected (I've jumpered the thing multiple ways and it seems to be an intermittant problem).

 

With the Western Digital jumpered as Master with Slave, I was getting the Bios not detecting the HDs half the time. With it jumpered as Master or Single, I'd get it going again about half the time.

 

It's odd that I would get further with the jumpers set to single or Master than with them set to Master with slave for the Western Digital. At least it is to me. Please tell me if I'm barking up the wrong tree here.

 

If I let the system sit for a while without power, it would come up without detecting both drives.

 

The first time I did this I was using a 10 GB Seagate as the secondary HD. Now I'm using an 8 GB Maxtor, and I don't know yet whether the problem persists (I haven't left the machine without power for more than a few minutes under this configuration).

 

Does anyone know of conflicts with WD HDs with other brands??? Why else besides this would I be losing the ability of the bios to communicate with the HDs (maybe the Seagate is getting intermittantly bad???)??? Any suggestions.

[tyme]

Have you tried setting both to cable select? just put the primary on the first connection and the secondary on the second connection (second being the one at the end of the IDE cable). i assume your system is home built-so this may not apply-but it fixed a issues i had with my friends' dell systems.

 

btw-WD doesn't play nicely with linux sometimes-i have two of them, and i ran into a lot of trouble getting Mandrake installed a few times. WD doesn't support Linux-they state it on their webpage somewhere, so....i dunno...just a tip for the future.

[pmpatrick]

If your BIOS is having trouble, it's a hardware problem and has nothing to do with linux. The most likely caue is a problem with the cabling or the jumpering. Also, if your motherboard/BIOS is old, it may not be able to recognize hds as large as 80 GB. First, check your cables. I assume your using the one that came with the WD drive which should be an 80 conductor cable necessary for UDMA. If your jumpering Master and Slave with the WD master, make sure it's on the connector on the end of the cable, not the middle one. Check the pins on both the hd and the mb to make sure nothing is bent. If your mb supports it, try jumpering cable select for both hds and see if that works. When you do boot up, check to see if the full 80 GB is detected.

 

Edit: tyme, i think your wrong on the cable configuration. The master drive should be set on the end connector, not the middle one. See the following link:

 

http://www.hardwarecentral.com/hardwarecen...tutorials/39/5/

[tyme]

If your BIOS is having trouble, it's a hardware problem and has nothing to do with linux.

I hope you didn't think my post was implying that it did...(since I was the only one who mentioned linux).

[pmpatrick]

tyme, were posting over eachother which is causing confusion. Hadn't read your post and meant no criticism. I still think your wrong on the cable confiuration per the above edit. That's just the way I always did it.

[Ixthusdan]

There are three pieces of hardware to consider: the wd drive, the maxtor, and the ide cable. I like to configure my cdrom devices on the other ide, unless I have another drive. Then, I like to run Primary master as a boot drive, primary slave as a cdrom device, secondery master as a cdrom device, and secondery slave as a hard drive. It's easier to run the cables, and there is no conflict between the cdrom devices.

 

As far as I know, I haven't heard of any maxtor with a wd issue.

But there are other possibilities: cmos battery needs replacing, cmos or bios issue. How old is the machine? Have there been any other problems lately, other than this one? I think I would check the cable first.

[tyme]

tyme, were posting over eachother which is causing confusion. Hadn't read your post and meant no criticism. I still think your wrong on the cable confiuration per the above edit. That's just the way I always did it.

quite alright, i wasn't sure-is why i asked.

 

anywho, you're right about the cable config. my memory is bad...

[Guest JaseP]

WD was the only choice I had in the HD dept in putting this system together.

 

It is now behaving itself with the Maxtor drive I have in. So I think that the problem may have been the Seagate drive I was using as the slave.

 

I don't have it set for cable select, so that's not the issue. It may be a problem with not using 80 conductor though, I'll check that.

 

Linux really wasn't the problem. WD might not "support" it, but that just means they don't want to expend $$$ and personell to fix Linux related issues, not that the drives don't work with Linux.

 

It's a brand new system so it's not a BIOS limitation problem.

[Guest fubar::chi]

i had a maxtor and wd hard drive dual setup until recently when the wd failed and I had the same intermettent problems. This probably wont help but it hasn't happened since the 20 gb WD hard drive (3 years old) failed.