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mobo will not recognize hd

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5 replies

by berkmberk1

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I'll try to make this short....Gigabyte GA7DXE mobo will not recognize Western Digital 40gb HD (an exception is noted below)

Absolutely everything has been checked, swapped out and checked again....every single component works....

I reflashed the bios today using the same bios file since it is the most current one.

The odd thing is the system will recognize the hd literally every other time I reboot, not on initial startup but on a reboot. It will not, however, recognize it if Iuse a boot disk. After a failure like that I'll reboot and it will recognize it again. Therefore I cannot use any fdisk functions.

All drives are setup on their own controllers. All jumper settings have been tried.

Any thoughts would be appreciated

Mike

5 replies

by thechas

Just to double check a few things:

New IDE cable?

Manual HDD settings in BIOS setup?
Force a specific UDMA / ATA mode?

How about a differnt HDD in the system?
Does it function properly?

How about the power supply?
If there is a problem with the 5 or 12 volt supply to the drive, that could explain why the drive is found on a re-boot, and not on initial boot.

One way to test this, is to set the RAM test for long / full test. This allows the HDD more time to complete the boot and POST sequence.

Aside from power problems, I suspect that either the IDE controller on the MB, or the electronics on the drive itself are marginal.

I have seen numerous 'strange' boot problems on socket A motherboards. ALL have been correctedby manually setting the CPU speed in BIOS settings.

Still, I am leaning towards an actual bad piece of hardware on this one.
Start with the Power Supply.
Then, try a different drive on the system.

Chas

by sgt_shultz

may we have the model number of the drive? you are not the only one i've heard of that couldn't get the wd 40gb drive to work. is it wd400?

by berkmberk1

it turns out that the hd was bad after all....tried it in another system and got nothing.....replaced it with another (won't say what brand) and everything worked fine

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