Gigabyte GA-7VAX Hard drive problems

Judg3 · Post by **Judg3** » Sun Dec 14, 2003 3:55 pm

Hey gang,
I've got a GA-7VAX in my wife's PC and it's been running perfect for almost a year now. Recently went to add in a second hdd, a WD 400BB 40Gb drive.
Attempted to add it as a slave to the current Samsung SP8004H 80Gb drive, and it just wouldn't take. The drive would show up in BIOS as some weird mix of ascii characters or not at all. No problem I though, bad drive. RMAed it, they sent me a new one and the SAME THING happened.

Tried several diffrent cables and the same thing happened. Tried it as the lone drive on Channel 1, same thing. Tried it as Master with Samsung as slave, nothing.

Was getting ready to RMA it again, when I decided to throw it on the channel with my CD-RW - lo and behold it works! Problem is, it's in ATA33 mode and I'd much rather prefer it to be in ATA100 mode - but it seems it won't work on my system.

Anyone have a similar problem or any idea on how I can get this drive setup on the same 80pin cable as my primary drive? I don't like the fact that it's on the 40pin cable that's also running her CD-RW - I WANT FULL SPEED!

Thanks!
Jeremy

NascarFool · Post by **NascarFool** » Sun Dec 14, 2003 4:56 pm

Put an ATA100/133 cable on it. The CD drive will work fine on an 80 conductor cable too.

Judg3 · Post by **Judg3** » Sun Dec 14, 2003 5:03 pm

Oh it will? I wasn't sure. I had an old asus system a few years back and had my tdk drive hooked up with an 80pin cable and I got a lot of weird problems with it - might of just been that model drive and such though - thanks - Ill give it a shot!

Post by **FlyingPenguin** » Sun Dec 14, 2003 5:45 pm

Usually when you get random ASCII characters for the drive ID in BIOS it means one of the following:

- You have the jumpers wrong (make sure the jumpers are correct on the master - many modern drives have TWO different master settings: one for single master and one for master with slave).

- You have a bad ribbon cable. Swap it out

- You have a dirty IDE connector. Just remove and re-insert the connectors on the drive and on the controller end. That forces the pins to be scraped clean by the contacts.

- You have a bad drive

Judg3 · Post by **Judg3** » Tue Dec 16, 2003 11:18 pm

Thanks FP, the samsung uses dual jumpers for it's config - I'll have to mess around with it more I guess hehe.