Weird Hard Drive Problem

System:
P4 3GHZ 512 Meg Ram
Asus P4C800-E Deluxe Motherboard

Two Hard Drives:
Master: Western Digital 160GB 7200 RPM ATA100

Slave: Maxtor 200 GB 7200 RPM ATA133

This system has been running fine with just master hard drive for over a
year now. About 4 months ago I added
the slave drive. System running great until last week. When I turned on
the computer the bios would not recognize
the hard drives. I opened the case and noticed the slave drive was
making a loud ticking noise. After trying many things,
including putting it in another computer, I realized this drive was
dead. (only four months old!)

Now here is where is gets interesting. Removed the slave drive from
system as it was dead. The system still would
not recognize the master drive - I thought that maybe a one is a zillion
thing had happend and both drive were bad.
Played around and finally discovered that if I reverse the ide cable the
system will boot the master drive and system
runs great. I just received my warranty replacment drive from Maxtor but
can't put it in system until I get this wierd
cable problem solved. Oh I did replace the cable with a brand new one
and still the same.

Any ideas anyone - this has me baffled

Butch

"Butch Hinton" <kd3yt123.RemoveThis@atlanticbb.net> wrote in message
news:12bd1mcjc360ebc@corp.supernews.com...
> System:
> P4 3GHZ 512 Meg Ram
> Asus P4C800-E Deluxe Motherboard
>
> Two Hard Drives:
> Master: Western Digital 160GB 7200 RPM ATA100
>
> Slave: Maxtor 200 GB 7200 RPM ATA133
>
> This system has been running fine with just master hard drive for over a
> year now. About 4 months ago I added
> the slave drive. System running great until last week. When I turned on
> the computer the bios would not recognize
> the hard drives. I opened the case and noticed the slave drive was making
> a loud ticking noise. After trying many things,
> including putting it in another computer, I realized this drive was dead.
> (only four months old!)
>
> Now here is where is gets interesting. Removed the slave drive from system
> as it was dead. The system still would
> not recognize the master drive - I thought that maybe a one is a zillion
> thing had happend and both drive were bad.
> Played around and finally discovered that if I reverse the ide cable the
> system will boot the master drive and system
> runs great. I just received my warranty replacment drive from Maxtor but
> can't put it in system until I get this wierd
> cable problem solved. Oh I did replace the cable with a brand new one and
> still the same.
>
> Any ideas anyone - this has me baffled
>
> Butch

reverse??? do you mean end for end only I thought the connectors were keyed
disallowing connector to socket reversal.

cables are normally colour coded to ensure correct connection. ie Blue to
MoBo and Black into drive.

very odd