A7N8X Deluxe Rev. 1.04 Hard Disk Problem

  • Thread starter Thread starter Martyn Cole
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Martyn Cole

When I power up my system I get a brief message saying that an 80
conductor IDE cable hasn't been detected for my Western Digital Caviar
120Gb hard disk. This has only started to happen recently.

Because of this Windows 2000 SP4 refuses to work in DMA modes and my
system is now practically unusable when there is a lot of disk
accessing.

I have upgraded the BIOS to 1.07 and reset the CMOS RAM but it didn't
make any difference. I have also tried several 80 conductor cables.

Has anyone been this fault before and is it likely to be the motherboard
or the hard disk.
 
I know people whe get that message if they do not have both IDE cables the
same type(ATA66/100/133)
(the cables with one connector black, middle one gray(grey), end one blue.
 
KB said:
I know people whe get that message if they do not have both IDE cables the
same type(ATA66/100/133)
(the cables with one connector black, middle one gray(grey), end one blue.
Click to expand...

Thanks I'll give that a try.
 
KB said:
I know people whe get that message if they do not have both IDE cables the
same type(ATA66/100/133)
(the cables with one connector black, middle one gray(grey), end one blue.
Click to expand...

Well I have now tried using 2 80 conductor cables and the message has
gone away :)

The odd thing is that it still won't use the drive in DMA mode on the
primary channel. Anyway I have put the HD on the secondary channel and
I now have a usable system again.

Thanks very much for your help :)

Regards,
 
Martyn,

I would suggest that you run your WD 120G drive in Cable Select mode
instead of Master/Slave mode. I have the same motherboard with the
same hard drive and it works fine in Cable Select mode - it operates
as UDMA Mode 5 in WinXP.

There were many posting several months ago about this and the
concensus was that the WD drives used with the A7N8X need to be run in
Cable Select mode.

Give this a try as it may solve your problem.

Good luck,

Doug
 
Martyn Cole said:
When I power up my system I get a brief message saying that an 80
conductor IDE cable hasn't been detected for my Western Digital Caviar
120Gb hard disk. This has only started to happen recently.

Because of this Windows 2000 SP4 refuses to work in DMA modes and my
system is now practically unusable when there is a lot of disk
accessing.

I have upgraded the BIOS to 1.07 and reset the CMOS RAM but it didn't
make any difference. I have also tried several 80 conductor cables.

Has anyone been this fault before and is it likely to be the motherboard
or the hard disk.
Click to expand...

I had problems with WD disk drives with my ABIT motherboard. It seems
that you had to cut one of the cable wires to make it work properly.
I'm not surprised that their IDE interface is still not absolutely
standard.

arnie
 
Doug said:
Martyn,

I would suggest that you run your WD 120G drive in Cable Select mode
instead of Master/Slave mode. I have the same motherboard with the
same hard drive and it works fine in Cable Select mode - it operates
as UDMA Mode 5 in WinXP.

There were many posting several months ago about this and the
concensus was that the WD drives used with the A7N8X need to be run in
Cable Select mode.

Give this a try as it may solve your problem.

Good luck,

Doug
Click to expand...

Hi Doug,

I was already working in cable select mode. It seems to be going OK now
so I'm not going to fiddle with it incase I break it again :)

Thanks
 
Ron said:
Martyn - try uninstalling the controllers (in DevMgr) and rebooting.

Ron
Click to expand...

I did think of doing that Ron, but after I had done a backup of the OS
just in case it goes crazy.

I'll let you know what happens when I eventually get around to it. Now
my system is usable I'm loathe to muck about anymore. if it works don't
fix it syndrome :)

regards
 
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