hi, i have 2 hard drives in my computer, one with my OS on it (XP Pro) and one that is just a backup drive. when i start up with just the 1st drive plugged in, it takes about a minute, but with the secondary drive connected as well, it takes up to five minutes! i do not know why this happened, it just started one day, and i have even tried a reformat, and it did not make a difference. does this mean that it has something to do with the bios? do i need to do a bios update?? I have an MSI VIA K8T800 Neo Motherboard with a CoreCell Chip, is this enough information? thanks ps. sorry if this information is blatantly obvious in Google, i just didn't know what to search for. if you have any idea, please do not hesitate to respond.
Not sure how you'd enable it on your mobo but in mine i have the hardware detection at boot show up on screen,if you can get yours to show,it may show which device is hanging if any,as for BIOS update if what was fine before & now is just happening the update won't help the boot screen i'm talk'n about should only show for around 5sec's or so if however you have removed an hdd from starting then put it back it will take a little longer but no more than 10sec's before you get to windows boot screen loading bar
If above does not help i would try another IDE cable, i have come across many faulty ones quite often. If you dont have one, try swapping the drives around or connecting them up by themselves one at a time on the known good cable (or end if you are using a single)to see if BIOS detects faster.
thank you for all your responses, i think i had better tell you about the startup in more detail... when i start my computer, the first five or so seconds are 'normal' (as in when i unplug the drive it takes the same time) and then it comes up at a black screen for about ten seconds, then comes up with a white loading type bar (the same type of one the comes up when you start up a computer from hibernation) which passes fairly quickly, then the windows loading screen take anything from 2-10 minutes. this is what happens when the 2nd hard drive is in. when i unplug the second hard drive, there is NO black screen and the load takes UPTO 2 mins. does the fact theat i can access all the data on the drive not mean that the drive is OK? i thought that if the drive was faulty, i couldn't access anything on there? am i correct?? cheers ; )
Hi Who_U, Just because you can access the drive does not necessarily mean it has no problems. One thing you could try is chkdsk. boot into windows, when it eventually boots, go to my computer, Right click the problem drive, select properties, tools, error checking check now, and do a thorough check. this may take some time but may be worth it. If that does not do the trick you will need to try the drive coupled in a friends computer under the same configuration in order to eliminate it or not as the case may be.
thank you everyone for replying, but i have found another way around it (we had an old drive laying around) thankyou again very much, and i will be back here if there are any more errors! cheers Who_U
are both drives on the same cable? if on same cable then how are they jumpered as in master/slave or cable select? what make of drives are they as in maxtor, wd or seagate?
thanks, they are both on the same cable, and master set to master and slave set to slave. they were both seagate, but i have fixed it by adding a new hard drive. thankyou every one for responding!
hey guys, ran into another issue with my pc, my hard drive with all my backups on it has stopped working. it does not spin when power is connected. is there anything i can do, without swapping the control boards? cheers Who_U
