Heya'll, I have a problem. I got a message this morning when I booted the computer up saying "Secondary Slave HD has failed, press F1 to continue" or something like that. I expected this, as I had heard some weird noises coming from the computer that sounded like a strained fan, or a broken ball-bearing system. The ok part is that I didn't actually have *anything* on that HD - it was my spare 1TB drive for emergency backup should my primary 1TB HD fail. The not so good bit is that when I booted my computer up, the Secondary Master dive (a WD velociraptor) suddenly dissappeared from the BIOS and thus I was unable to access it when the computer booted. I've sinced rebooted the PC, and I am able to access the SM veloci, so I'm backing up the data now. From what I can tell, this drive is fully functional, so I want to be able to access it. I am guessing that the reason it dissappeared from view is due to the way PM/PS;SM/SS works. I say guess, because I don't really know much about this bit of computers. I want to be able to fix this problem myself, so I could use some advice. The following is what I want to do, so I want to know whether it is possible, and how I would go about doing it: 1. Physically remove the dead 1TB HD. 2. Ensure that the veloci remains registered on the BIOS, so I can continue to use it without a hitch. Here is my current storage layout, if needed: PM: Velociraptor A PS: Samsung 1TB A SM: Velociraptor B SS: Samsung 1TB B (dead) 3M: Intel SSD #NB, I assume "3M" here means tertiary master? Any help would be appreciated, CCA
I am pretty sure on modern BIOS's the primary, secondary and slave settings does not matter nearly as much as it used to - the main thing I worry about is which is the boot drive, and that is about it. What I would suggest is make sure you have a backup of the settings your BIOS has, remove the drive and see what happens - you can always put it back in. As long as you have a backup of everything on those other disks (as you should do if it is important) then there is no risk. Final thought - with one hard drive going bye bye, and another disappearing, it could be a faulty disk controller/power supply rail that is killing your drives off gradually...
Er, you're using SATA right? In which case, just unplug the dead drive, unscrew it, and try and get a refund if you only bought it recently. By and large, with SATA, you can have any drive plugged into any port* as it doesn't use a master/slave system like IDE used to. So basically, just unplug the dead drive and you're good to go, although I'm slightly worried by the raptor not showing up, should be fine tho. *(unless your mother board has different sets of SATA ports controlled by different controllers, let us know what motherboard you're using and I or someone else will double check)
Thanks for the reply . Whilst I do believe its SATA - I seem to recall something about IDE being enabled when I routled around the BIOS. I can't remember exactly, so I'll make a note to look around and see if I can find anything when I next boot the computer. The MoBo I'm using is an ASUS Rampage Extreme II iirc. CCA
So it's SATA given the board Well, at least 2 of them are SATA as it only has 1 IDE port. The IDE bit in BIOS is the mode the SATA ports are set to, basically making them compatible out of the box with XP. As Phuzz said just unplug the dead drive.
Cool, will do. Thanks for all the advice . Qazax, sorry I missed your post. Re: PSU, I bloody well hope its not causing an issue, as I already had to have a new one installed due to the previous one having a faulty rail. I checked the voltages monitor in the BIOS, and they all seem to be at a sensible level - and none are registering red. Update: Unplugged dead HD. So far, no disappearing drives \o/.
