Hard drive problem

[apvm]

I reinstalled XP on my wife's computer last Friday due to a motherboard upgrade, the hard drive is secondary and DVD drive is Master and was like this with the old motherboard and since the new motherboard has only one IDE channel so nothing really change.

Anyway, Windows XP installed without problem and everything is fine until Monday Morning, Bios did not detect the hard drive only the DVD Drive, as a result the computer will not boot instead asking something like a CD and press a key to continue etc.

The Hard disk is a Western Digital 80GB drive. Anyway I suspect the hard drive finally gave up but before I jumped into conclusion, I like to ask a few questions.

1) Is there a possiblilty that the motherboard has short circuit somewhere? but logic told me if that is the case, wouldn't the DVD drive which is on the same chain as the Hard drive not detected as well?

2) Not exactly a question, I was able to boot into windows after a few reset and was able to run the windows based software provided by Western Digital web site, the hard drive passed both short and long test and was able to work for the rest of the afternoon and was shutted down before my wife goes to bed.

3) I tried to turn on her computer a few minutes ago and the hard drive not detected again. Is it a dying drive? or the motherboard?

Tia

 

[enaberif]

Hard drive should always be master and optical secondary.

We'd need more specs to diagnose anything sorry.

 

[apvm]

It wasn't a matter of master/slave, it was like that for the past 7 years, my problem is bios suddenly doesn't detect the drive....anyway installed XP on a spare 120GB SATA drive and all is fine....now going to test that IDE drive on my computer to see if it will be detected, if not, I need to do the freezer trick to see if I could backup my wife email files.

 

[gingerbee]

I have seen bios's that would not boot 7 or vista from an ide drive (any ide drive that is ) for what ever reason i don't know what it was. but found always that the sata ports would boot fine ( only found this on old computers too ) FYI

 

[apvm]

I am still using XP...anyway the drive was detected on my computer, so I back up all the files by burning a Data DVD. Ran the WD Lifeguard tools on it and passed both short and long test. move it back to my wife's computer and can't be detected either with it alone or with the DVD Drive...either the 1st header or the 2nd header...doesn't look like it is the cable since the DVD drive was detected all along...unless HDD and DVD drive uses different pin. So no idea what the problem is, especailly I don't have another IDE Hard disk to test and don't really want to rma the motherboard because of this...anyway did file a question to Gigabyte support and waiting to see what they say.

 

[Perineum]

Is the HD set to master like Enaberif said?

 

[apvm]

Cable select with an ATA-66 cable