hdd boot problems

[Mr. Urt]

I was putting together a new computer, and I backed everything up on a second hdd and a third external one. I just put my second hdd in my new computer and was booting from the second one (a Western Digital) because my primary hdd (a hitachi) would no longer boot (that was an unrelated problem caused by me forgetting about grub and just formatting and removing one of the hdds. I tried fixmbr but windows got corrupted somehow). Anyways, I got everything backed up, and formatted and installed windows on the hitachi (I had the WD unplugged for this just as an extra precaution against accidentally formatting the wrong one). All was going well until I hooked both of the hdds up and got a bsod when I tried to boot. I tried waiting and letting the computer cool off a minute then tried again, and that was a no go. I then unplugged the WD because I was worried that I had physically damaged the hitachi (I had to handle it pretty roughly to get it out of my old case as it was stuck in there pretty good). With only the hitachi plugged in the computer booted fine. Then I was worried that I had corrupted the WD somehow, so I tried booting that, and it booted. Here's where it gets odd, when the WD booted, it took a really, really long time. I ignored this for the time being and tried to boot agian with both drives. Again it wouldn't boot. I had both drives on cable select before, so I tried manually selecting master and slave, but instead of getting a bsod I got a "disk error" message when I tried to boot. I double checked the jumper settings but they looked ok. After that I tried just booting the WD, and again it took a really long time to boot. Now I'm copying a 3gb file from the WD to the external hdd, and it's about 15 minutes in and just breaking halfway. Anybody have any idea what's going on¿

[edit] Oops, I almost forgot, the Western Digital is a 40gb Caviar, and the Hitachi is the 7k250 deskstar, both ide. My other system specs are as follows:

3500+ venice
dfi lanparty ultra-d nf4
2gb crucial ballistix
leadtek 6600gt

Also, just after I posted this the file transfer to the external hdd sped up, but it's not going as fast as it should.

[edit2] I forgot to mention that I bumped everything down to stock settings before I did all of this, so it's not an overclock that's causing the problems.

[Mr. Urt]

Well, today the first thing I tried was leaving the jumpers set where they were (hitachi as master and WD as slave), only I switched the connectors that I was using (so the black one on the end was connected to the WD and the grey one was connected to the hitachi). This booted fine and at normal speed, however it booted to the WD instead of the hitachi. I double checked the jumpers, but they were set properly. This confused me because it was as if the ide controller was looking for cable select and disreguarding the jumpers. My first inclination was that it was a problem with one of the drives, so I tried playing around with various combinations of jumper settings and cable orientation. One of those times the computer failed to boot, however I did notice something that could possibly be the answer to my problem. There was a listing of various components on the screen and what irq they were set at. When glancing at this I happened to notice that many of them had the same number. I'm no expert, expecially at irq, since I'm not exactly sure what irq is, but I was under the impression that no two active devices are to have the same irq. Without further ado, here's a listing of all the devices that share the same irq:

Device -- irq

SMBus Controller -- 11
Multimedia device -- 11
IDE Controller -- 11

USB 2.0 EHCI Controller -- 5
Network Controller -- 5

USB 1.0/1.1 OHCI Controller -- 3
Serial Bus Controller -- 3
Display Controller -- 3

Could this be the problem¿ And if so, how do I remedy it¿

[aja]

i have absolutely no idea what you're talking about, but my WD doesnt want to boot propperly either, shuts down, then starts spinning up again, repeatedly :explode: , the nerve!

i'd like to help, hard drives are almost as frustrating as networks when they dont work, little boxes and wires with tiny LED indication lights flashing like a couple of young and drunk fire-flies confused by passing cars' headlights, reminiscent of short glimpses of the ever encroaching unforgiving daylight.... :thumbsup: