How best to deal with this?

[Jeff Heikkinen]

I've been having occasional problems booting up which I THINK are due to
a hard drive issue, but I'm not sure what the best fix is (preferably
short of replacing the HDD but I'll do that if I need to).

Here's the problem: Occasionally when I try to boot up, it either takes
5-6 times as long as usual or just plain hangs. Just before this
happens, when my BIOS is counting up RAM and doing its "head count" on
the IDE channels, it SOMETIMES either shows my secondary slave drive in
garbled characters, or not at all. Once it does boot up, if it does,
Windows usually doesn't show that drive, and occasionally doesn't show
my burner either, which is the master of that same channel.

This doesn't happen all the time, and as far as I can tell there is no
particular pattern to when it does and doesn't. You'll gather from all
the "usually"s and "occasionaly"s that there is no one consistent way
that the problem manifests itself.

When this happens, it seems to help to go into the BIOS and have it
autodetect the hard drive in question. After I do this (which always
works, but sometimes takes an inordinately long time), the next bootup
is always normal. Sometimes that only fixes it for one bootup,
sometimes it works fine for upwards of a week. Overall I've been having
the problem on and off for about a month.

What kind of problem does this sound like, and what are some suggestions
for dealing with it?

 

[CJT]

I've been having occasional problems booting up which I THINK are due to
a hard drive issue, but I'm not sure what the best fix is (preferably
short of replacing the HDD but I'll do that if I need to).

Here's the problem: Occasionally when I try to boot up, it either takes
5-6 times as long as usual or just plain hangs. Just before this
happens, when my BIOS is counting up RAM and doing its "head count" on
the IDE channels, it SOMETIMES either shows my secondary slave drive in
garbled characters, or not at all. Once it does boot up, if it does,
Windows usually doesn't show that drive, and occasionally doesn't show
my burner either, which is the master of that same channel.

This doesn't happen all the time, and as far as I can tell there is no
particular pattern to when it does and doesn't. You'll gather from all
the "usually"s and "occasionaly"s that there is no one consistent way
that the problem manifests itself.

When this happens, it seems to help to go into the BIOS and have it
autodetect the hard drive in question. After I do this (which always
works, but sometimes takes an inordinately long time), the next bootup
is always normal. Sometimes that only fixes it for one bootup,
sometimes it works fine for upwards of a week. Overall I've been having
the problem on and off for about a month.

What kind of problem does this sound like, and what are some suggestions
for dealing with it?

That sounds like an IBM drive I had just before it died.

You could also have a cabling problem.

 

[Rod Speed]

I've been having occasional problems booting
up which I THINK are due to a hard drive issue,

Not that likely given the fine detail.

but I'm not sure what the best fix is (preferably short
of replacing the HDD but I'll do that if I need to).

Here's the problem: Occasionally when I try to boot up, it either
takes 5-6 times as long as usual or just plain hangs. Just before
this happens, when my BIOS is counting up RAM and doing its
"head count" on the IDE channels, it SOMETIMES either shows
my secondary slave drive in garbled characters, or not at all.

That indicates a problem communicating with the drives.

Once it does boot up, if it does, Windows usually doesn't
show that drive, and occasionally doesn't show my burner
either, which is the master of that same channel.

That last bit about the burner is important.

This doesn't happen all the time, and as far as I can tell there
is no particular pattern to when it does and doesn't. You'll
gather from all the "usually"s and "occasionaly"s that there
is no one consistent way that the problem manifests itself.

Which indicates that its more likely
to be a poor connection somewhere.

The first thing to try is a new ribbon cable
for those drives. It could just be a flakey cable.

If that makes no difference, it could be the hard drive going bad,
normally due to a poor connection on the drive somewhere or a
dry joint on the logic card etc. That can produce those symptoms
where the bad drive prevents the burner being seen all the time.

It could also be a flakey IDE controller on the
motherboard, but thats well down the list of possibilitys.

When this happens, it seems to help to go into
the BIOS and have it autodetect the hard drive
in question. After I do this (which always works,
but sometimes takes an inordinately long time),

Which again indicates flakey communication with the drive.

the next bootup is always normal. Sometimes that only fixes it
for one bootup, sometimes it works fine for upwards of a week.
Overall I've been having the problem on and off for about a month.

What kind of problem does this sound like,

A poor connection somewhere, or a drive going bad.

and what are some suggestions for dealing with it?

Try a new ribbon cable and if that doesnt help, can
you try that drive in a different system and see if it
behaves the same way in more than one system ?

 

[Jeff Heikkinen]

Rod Speed, worshipped by llamas the world over, wrote...

Not that likely given the fine detail.

(Lots of useful stuff snipped)

Thanks! I'll check that the connection is secure, if so, I'll try a new
IDE cable and see if that helps. If not, I may be back.

I won't be able to give it a go until Monday afternoon at the earliest,
but thanks. (If anyone else has any other advice I'll certainly stop in
to read that too!)