A bit of a strange problem has appeared lately. When booting up my computer takes ages to detect my harddrives. I can find nothing in BIOS which seems wrong, and the harddisks test fine. I wonder if I have a slightly botched BIOS version or if one or more of my disks are letting me know they are nearing the end of their lifespan. At boot the computer will post fine and then hang for quite some time at HDD detection. Then the disks roll in and the computer continues booting. HDD initialization (that's what I think is going on at least) during Vista startup also takes long. Any suggestions? I've just upgraded from 2Gb to 4Gb RAM and I've just reinstalled Vista (the problem was there prior to this except for the long time HDD init takes during Vista startup - that one is new.) I do have one old SATA drive which I am slightly suspicious of, and I will see if disconnecting this one might alleviate the problem - also there is an IDE drive which is more than ready to be swapped. Unfortunately I do need continuous access to the data that's on these disks.
Yes I do. I have two Raptors in RAID-0 for OS. Then I have three more SATA disks and one SATA Plextor writer. Additionally I have one IDE 200Gb disk which, after a sudden lightbulb moment, I suspect might be the cause of my problems because it sits alone on its IDE cable and is jumped to master. I seem to recall that leaving a disk jumped when it is alone on the cable might cause problems. I'll remove this jumper and unplug my old 80Gb SATA drive to see what happens. Anyhow, it's time to go shop for some new drives I think - swapping all my older drives for new and shiny ones.
Yes, those are attractive. However, I have something of a Western Digital thing going - I really like WDs, but I'll definitely check out those F1s.
Ok. Now I can confirm that the problem was plain and simply the IDE drive that were jumped to master. Removing the jumper solved the problem. Can't believe I've not thought about that one before. Oh well, problem solved.
interisting. sometimes my really old drive wont spin up right away. the system sits and waits to try and detect it. glad you got it figured though.
Aye, a master drive (iirc) is on the end connector of the ide cable, and a slave should sit on the middle one.
Yes I did have it on the end connector; the slave connector was empty. Anyhow, that 200Gb IDE drive will be exchanged for a new SATA one - as will the old 80Gb SATA drive. And now that I am in the buy-new-HDDs mood, I am considering getting one more Raptor for some nice RAID-5 action.
