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Old Hard Drive Causing problems

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8 replies

by jmj28

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I recently salvaged an old IBM Hard Drive from a trashed computer. But when I try to install the drive the power does not come on throughout the whole computer. When I disconnnect the drive however, it works fine. Anybody know what might be goingon?

8 replies

by tbradley

check to see if it is set as a slave if connected to the same ide cable as either the original C: drive, or the CD rom.

Yet this shouldn't cause the power to shut down. If set properly as slave, or master if it is the only drive on the secondarycontroller, chances are the drive has a massive short, not allowing the power supply to get a "signal good" return. In that case, take it out, and see how far you can toss it.

by jmj28

Thanks a lot man. I think that the short in the drive is the real problem. It was a peice of junk that I tried to salvage but that is a very likely answer.

by stuff

This would suggest to me that the IDE ribbon is on the wrong way round, make sure that the red line goes to pin 1 (The one closest to the power connector on HDDs) on both HDDs and motherboard. Having said that sometimes it's easier to put the red strand to pin 40 of space is tight and you have a short cable.

That's my answer and I'm sticking to it.

Chris

PS It's not a SCSI HDD is it? (Just a thought, you never know)

by jdfcomputer

Many of the newer motherboards, particularly ATX motherboards are programmed to not power on the computer if the IDE channels are not passing traffic properly, i.e. the IDE ribbon cables are plugged in upside down, both drives on the same IDE channels are set to master, or a dead hard drive is present.
Also note that some older drives would not slave to another drive, try connecting the old drive to the secondary IDE port.

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