Randomly missing IDE hard drives

[Rask]

I've lately got the issue of randomly disappearing IDE hard drives. The drives are hooked straight (master+slave) to the IDE slot on my motherboard. I also use a SATA drive connected in the same fashion with a DVD-drive.

Sometimes when turning on the computer my IDE drives are missing. Sometimes a reboot or two makes it go away and the problem doesn't appear in a while. Sometimes I need to relink the cables in my case for it to work. Sometimes nothing but waiting seems to work. I can't find any culprit.

Any ideas what is causing this?

The IDE hard drives are normal 250Gb Seagate drives hooked with a IDE cable to my Abit IP35-Pro motherboard. I use no modded drivers/components or addon pieces for the drives to work.

 

[SkaarjMaster]

How old are the drives? Have you switched out the cables to see if that is the problem?

 

[Rask]

Quite old. I've been thinking of replacing them with a large SATA drive. The older one is nearly five years old. I'll try some cables I've got at home. The cables in place are quite new though.

 

[Wormbo]

Try listening very carefully for sounds other than the startup PC speaker beeps. Some HDDs generate beep sounds when they are about to fail, but those are hardly audible if you don't expect them.

 

[Zur]

Activate SMART in the BIOS to see if you get any errors. Also check your sata connectors. Also, Wormbo's tip is a good one. Some drives like the IBMs have an internal beeper that signal an issue.

 

[Hadmar]

Could also be a cold solder joint on the mainboard. One of my old ones died that way. I believe the Agony lasted a full year and when it finally died it felt lonely and took the HDD with it.

If you have the option, try if the drives work flawlessly on a different PC.