30.0Gb WDc and A7V troubles

[Flyboy]

I spent an entire week setting up my brother's computer:

Asus A7V (rev. 1.02)
BIOS 1005a
30.0Gb WD hardrive
VisionTek GeForce 2 GTS
1Ghz Atlon T-bird
SB LIVE! Video Card
256Mb PC133 SDRAM
Delta 52X CD-rom
10/12/?? Yamaha CD-RW

I'm pretty sure I followed the correct steps:
1. Installed mobo,ram,hd,cd-rom,cd-rw, floppy,videocard
2. Format and partition harddrive
3. Installed Win98 SE
4. Installed network card and accessed internet for bios 1005a and latest via4-in-1 drivers (4.26)
5. Flashed new BIOS and updated drivers
6. Performed some Windows Updates
7. Installed SB! Live soundcard

IDE-setup:
Primary ATA100: 30Gb WD hardrive (MASTER)
Primary ATA66: Yamaha CD-RW (MASTER)
Secondary ATA66: Delta Cd-rom (MASTER)

The system ran well for about a two days and then one morning I hit the power button and received, "Invalid System boot disk... insert disk and press any key" Under DOS I checked my c:drive and found that damn near everything was GONE! The was no Windows system directory or anything! I checked my connections, re-formatted and partitioned the harddrive, and reinstalled windows. Two days later it again dies. I'm at a total loss. My guess is the hardrive is faulty. Do any of you concur or do you suspect the mobo? I really need help because I've returned to Ohio while my brother is in Texas with a dead puter' and he's probably feeling quit pizzed right about now after spending all that money. I recommended that he return the hardrive in favor of getting a 40Gb IBM drive (everyone here seems to highly recommend IBM drives).


Thanks guys!

 

[Guest]

Take it home. Copy your system to it. And use it as your main drive... see if it happens again. I'm leaning toward saying maybe the harddrive if you have all the latest drivers for the ATA100, Via, etc, but might not be. If it dies on another board (hopefully a little different board, one that you know works), I think you'll have a clearer answer to that.

You could also try leaving it on the mb ATA66 controllers instead of the integrated Promise. It's not like that drive is sucking for bandwidth. See if it dies on those. Then you've narrowed it down to probably being a serious problem with the board or the drive if it does it again and not just some driver or integrated ATA100 thing.

***Hey I run Intel... but let's get real***

 

[Flyboy]

Well the problem is I can't take it home. He's in Texas and I'm in Ohio. I spent about nine days over Christmas with him and tried to build his computer. The first time it died I did try moving it to the ATA66 port but it still didn't work. Even if that did fix it we'd be in trouble because I couldn't get the CD-rom and CD-RW drives to work in MASTER/SLAVE mode so they are set as primary MASTER (CD-RW) and secondary MASTER (CD-ROM). I guess I could set the hd to MASTER and CD-Rom as Slave...

It's as if the partition table (correct wording?) is corrupted or something. If only I could narrow it down as you said to the hardrive,motherboard IDE controller, or driver problem...

 

[Lucol]

Make sure you're using an 80pin IDE cable, I've had problems on my own computer with ATA66 drives and no 80pin cable. I have to disable DMA access for the drive so that the info doesn't get corrupted. Disable DMA access to see if that's the problem.

 

[Guest]

well when I think about it again.. it would be very strange for a drive to just lose large amounts of data (as in your entire Windows directory goes bye bye) due to a funky interface problem (such as the wrong cable, bad interface, or bad drivers for the OS). So that makes me think there is probably something wrong with the drive if you truly were losing a large amount of data and not just getting a few corrupt files or incidental quirkiness. If the partition table were corrupted, you could not even be able to check the drive in DOS as DOS would have no clue to it's structure and how to read the drive. Why the drive may be doing this that I don't know.

Try the 80pin cable as mentioned if you haven't. Although if you don't have to, I wouldn't advise running it with DMA disabled. PIO mode has way more cpu overhead and a limited bandwidth of 16 MB/s, which will certainly limit newer drives. And I would advise although I failed to mention it running the CD drives when you resolve the HD problem on separate IDE channels. Obviously with no other HDs it can be done as master and master on each channel. There should be no reason why you can't do this. It will allow for more stable burns from CD-Rom to CD-RW and hopefully eliminate any chance of buffer underuns, certainly if they are both DMA capable CD drives.

***Hey I run Intel... but let's get real***

 

[Flyboy]

Hey thanks for the feedback guys! I know it's not a 80-conductor cable issue because I was aware of that requirement from the get-go (unless the cable is BAD). Here are the things I plan on trying according to you guys and friends here at school:

1. Replace with new drive (may as well I guess before 14 day period is up)

If problem reoccurs with new drive:

2. Resort back to BIOS revision 1004c (from 1005a)

If problem persists:

3. Set Hardrive on ATA66 port as MASTER with CD-Rom as Slave, and CD-RW on Secondary IDE as MASTER

Some of my friends here at school suggested the following:

1. Use FDISK rather than the software provided by WDigital.
2. Manually set the drive to LBA, rather than AUTO in the BIOS (he said he had problems with a system and doing this fixed it).

What do you guys think of these ideas....seem pretty reasonable to me.

By the way, while the system was running the CD-ROM and CD-RW were working great on seperate IDE channels...All IDE devices had their own ports:

ATA100: 30Gb WD harddrive
Primary ATA66: Yamaha CD-RW
Secondary ATA66: Delta 52X CD-Rom

I'll give you guys an update as soon as possible. I'll probably just add a new thread...call it: "A7V w/ WD cured?" or something...

 

[Guest]

Might as well replace it. A person brought this up on another post somewhere and that's that Asus doesn't even have the 1005a bios on their website.. at least I can't find it where you would think it would be (I have an ASUS board myself so I thumb through it quite a bit). So the 1004c sounds like a good thing. 3 is alright.. but damn I'd like to use that ATA100 port if I could (for hard drives only, because I never could get CD drives to work when I've used a controller card which is virtually the same thing). And I've never used anything but fdisk for FAT partitions. Forcing LBA might be something to do, but you would have had other problems not using LBA if that were the problem. Good Luck.. you've probably just about got it.. (would suck if it were that 1005a bios causing it.. I really wouldn't have thought about changing it if I hadn't seen someone post about it not being on their site anymore).


***Hey I run Intel... but let's get real***

 

[Flyboy]

Hey thanks Chord. Since your a Journeyman I'm sure you would like to know how this story ends so I'll be sure to let you know when I resolve this problem.

Taker' Easy!