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Hard drive won't turn on when IDE cable Inserted

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by qozmiq

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Just got a new mobo, chip, HD, Pwr. S. When I plug both IDE and Pwr in the new Seagate 320g HD, it won't turn on. With IDE out, it powers up just fine. I swapped to another IDE cable, and the same thing happened. I used another HD from my other pc, and It does the same thing. I tried both cables, same thing. If two hard drives and two cables all behave the same way, I don't think its either of them. It gets stranger. I have two DVD burners in the machine. If they have both IDE and PWR cables in them, a green light turns on the DVD drives, but they will not open. If I take out the IDE, the light comes on, I can open them no problem. So, all drives, both cables, no worky worky. I am completly at a loss as to what is causing this. Mobo>?

5 replies

by kiltie

You need to supply more info.

You didn't mention what the other HD was you tried.

Gonna try a wild guess here..... you mentioned a new motherboard? what type?

You also mentioned a rather large HD at 320GB, some mother boards and BIOSs won't take that size. There is a common limit of around 132GB for many, so it depends on what you have.

What Operating System?
What Computer model?
RAM?

Cables...... two IDEs? how many devices?

Does the new HD work on the old system but not on the new one?

Yep, need lots of info here, besides just plugging in IDE cables.

Have you got new (known working) cables?

Try minimising the system, just to one hard drive and no opticals and test it then?

by 3xp3rt

There are some things to verify:
1. Is the IDE drives jumper settings correctly done?
2. The BIOS settings are made correctly?
1. The IDE drives must be set by jumper on the same cable one master and the other slave.
2. In BIOS must be enabled all the IDE connectors.

by deadly ernest

Things to be checked with IDE drives

1. Cables - right number of wires, 40 pin or 80 pin. All modern hard drives require 80 pin cables, not 40 pin, they won't work with the older cables. Most optical devices will.

Cable has to be plug in the right way at both the motherboard and hard drive, the red line on the cable near pin one. I've seen many cases where they were inverted at one end.

All pins must be OK on the motherboard and the drive, none bent over.

Cables can have individual wires broken if they're bent or folded over too tightly, and this will cause problems too.

2. Motherboard - it must have the IDE capability turned on in all the relevant places in the BIOS. It must also be capable of handling a hard drive of the size concerned, some older boards have limits, due to BIOS limitations.

3. Drive jumper settings. Most drives, hard and optical, have jumpers allowing you to set them as Master, Slave, or Cable. You must have them set appropriately, either one as Master, and the other as Slave; or both as Cable. Failure to set any will cause access difficulties as will jumper conflicts.

NB Some motherboards require the Master to be on the end of the cable, some it can be in either position.

Some drives also have jumper settings to adjust other parameters, you must ensure that these are correctly set as well.

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NB re the opticals, if you're using a Linux or Unix OS, then you may not be able to manually open the optical once the OS loads, unless you unmount the drive, or access via the software.

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