Two IDE HDD, one shows in Bios, neither in windows (Disk manager and Device manager)

[The_Respectable_Aussie]

I have two IDE HDD hooked up to my MOBO (With molex power, and ribbon cable) both set to Cable Select. In the bios only the slave one shows up, and in windows neither are shown, in disk manager and device manager. My MOBO is a Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD4 and the HDD are both Seagate Barracuda 7200.9's. PLEASE HELP!

I am trying to check and backup what's on these old drives before I toss them.

Thanks - The_Respectable_Aussie

 

[mickypheonix]

Hi m8,
set each drive to master on the back by inserting the pin connector into the correct position hock up only one at a time and see if you can read either drive

 

[The_Respectable_Aussie]

Hi m8,
set each drive to master on the back by inserting the pin connector into the correct position hock up only one at a time and see if you can read either drive

Yeah I've tried this, in every position on the jumper, on both HDD and between two different cables, one with all the same colour connectors and one with coloured connectors (Slave=Grey, Master=Black and Source(MOBO)=Green. Been at it all day, given up for the night now though. Will try and go at it again tomorrow.

 

[mickypheonix]

perhaps you HDD's are dead ? you may have to toss them ,
sata drives are way quicker than old ide pata drives plus no bulky ribbon cable

 

[The_Respectable_Aussie]

perhaps you HDD's are dead ? you may have to toss them ,
sata drives are way quicker than old ide pata drives plus no bulky ribbon cable

Yeah, that could be it, but I was hearing the drives doing their thing, and could feel the disk spinning when I touched them (They were outside the case, because I just wanted to open them)

 

[mickypheonix]

i know exactly what you mean m8 , i went through about a dozen old drives i had the other day they all spun up but only got two working , knew most of them had had it but just wanted too see. just cause they power up does not mean they haven't had their day.
they are really cheap to buy nowadays m8 , being a fellow aussie Pccasegear are probably the cheapest and best to deal with here in aus for pc parts
and really quick , i bought a DOA ( dead on arival ) HDD from them once , returned it and had replacement 2 days later

 

[The_Respectable_Aussie]

i know exactly what you mean m8 , i went through about a dozen old drives i had the other day they all spun up but only got two working , knew most of them had had it but just wanted too see. just cause they power up does not mean they haven't had their day.
they are really cheap to buy nowadays m8 , being a fellow aussie Pccasegear are probably the cheapest and best to deal with here in aus for pc parts
and really quick , i bought a DOA ( dead on arival ) HDD from them once , returned it and had replacement 2 days later

Ok, they're dead, damn. Well I wasn't lookin' for any extra space, just wanted to get the files off of them. I know about pccasegear, although I use MSY most of the time, they're cheaper and have retail stores close enough to make it convenient!

 

[mickypheonix]

msy are really good aswell , sorry i couldn't help get em going m8 , all the best

 

[mouse24]

Do the drives show up in the bios?

 

[The_Respectable_Aussie]

Do the drives show up in the bios?

One of them does, the one hooked up as slave.

 

[mouse24]

Do the drives show up in the bios?

One of them does, the one hooked up as slave.

Interesting. Does it see it if its hooked up as a master? (you might need to use the other connector on the cable if its set to cable select. I had an issue where even when I specifically set the hdd to master, it was forced onto cable select mode)

Does that drive show up in windows? If it doesn't does it show up using a linux live CD? (don't install linux, just use the CD to check) (I've had dieing hard drives that don't show in windows that I can see/access perfectly fine in linux)

 

[The_Respectable_Aussie]

Do the drives show up in the bios?

One of them does, the one hooked up as slave.

Interesting. Does it see it if its hooked up as a master? (you might need to use the other connector on the cable if its set to cable select. I had an issue where even when I specifically set the hdd to master, it was forced onto cable select mode)

Does that drive show up in windows? If it doesn't does it show up using a Linux live CD? (don't install Linux, just use the CD to check) (I've had dieing hard drives that don't show in windows that I can see/access perfectly fine in Linux)

Upon following your instructions I found that the master end of the cable was broken and that one of the hard drives was dead, but one worked and appeared when I booted Linux! Thanks! I found a nice cache of steam backups, less re-downloading games!