possible hard drive death

[pik-ard v1.1]

ok, normally i have one drive on the 1st IDE channel, and the optical drive on the second IDE channel.

then i put a 2nd drive on the 1st IDE channel. it worked fine, i had a dual boot system for a day or so.

THEN, the BIOS won't recognize anything on the IDE channels. at all. i take out the 2nd drive, and it works fine.

is the 2nd drive dead?

[LIQUIDHERION]

For instance, Maxtor has a powermax program designed solely to check this. Run it- it will tell you whats going on and from there whether to rma it if you can.
Put drive 1 on ide cable master leaving slave connection empty and put drive 2 on slave cable on the master setting and ...make sure the jumpers are set correctly.

For some odd reason i've had problem with those sleeved ide cables you see in the stores...they'll work fine for 6 mos and then quit....i'll replace it with the stock ribbon cable and it'll boot up just fine. I don't question it, I just keep trying until it works.
Hook up the drive in question and "feel" it for vibrations. and check it with Partition magic to see if it recognises it. and also the windows version of partitioning the hard drive to see if the drive is recognised as well as using the bios.

I sorta wish i had a dead drive lying around so i could take it apart and check out the insides. I'll have to check that next time im in luck. :cool: