Master vs Cable Select?

[Puter Moron]

I am in a bit of a fog and hope someone can clarify a couple of things for me. I was given a desktop that kept booting to "a disc read error occurred”.  Boot order was HDD (Western Digital drive), CD, floppy. Changed boot order to CD, HDD and floppy and tried reloading XP but had to move jumper on HDD to master to do the reloading all the way to the desktop.  Success!  The next time I restarted the computer I would get “disk boot failure, insert system disk and press enter”.  Doing that would restart loading XP again.  I exited out of the reload.  For grins I moved the HDD jumper back to cable select and now boots to the desktop every time and is functioning normally. 

Can anyone explain why the move from cable select to master for the reload was needed as both HDD & CD had separate IDE cables and there was only one HDD? 

Also, the jumper move from master back to cable select for normal operation after reload?

[Salmon Trout]

HDD faulty

[Computer_Commando]

...Can anyone explain why the move from cable select to master for the reload was needed as both HDD & CD had separate IDE cables and there was only one HDD? ...

Cable select is more reliable with 80-conductor ribbon cable, than with 40-conductor cable.

[dahlarbear]

1.  Was hard drive cable 40-wire or 80-wire cable?

2.  Was hard drive the only device on the cable?

3.  Which cable connector were you connecting hard drive to:
     a.  Blue, Gray, Black?
     b.  Motherboard end, middle, far end?

4.  Was cable connected to "primary" or "secondary" IDE motherboard connector?

[patio]

Changing jumper settings will sometimes make a bad drive seem OK...i agree wqith Salmon here...that drive is probably failing.

[Puter Moron]

HDD cable is 40 wire and only device on cable.

The cable connector on the HDD was black with a gray connector about 6 inches from it and another black connector connected to the Mboard which is about 12 inches from the gray connector.

Mother board was connected at the far end from the middle (not connected to anything) connector:
MB black=================Gray nothing========Black HDD

Cable was connected to the primary IDE motherboard connector. 

When I had the disc read error I switched it to the Secondary motherboard connector to see if that made a difference but I still had the same results so I switched it back to the Primary. 

I even used the IDE cable from the CD drive (it also had its own IDE cable and nothing connected on the slave - gray connector).  I connected it from the HDD to the Mboard Primary and still got disc read error.  Then switched form the Primary IDE connector on the Mboard to the Secondary IDE connector on the Mboard and still got the disc read error.

To take it even farther I took and IDE cable from my previous computer, RIP, and did the same as above swapping between the Mboard IDE primary and Secondary to the HDD and still got the disc read error.  So before I move the jumper on the HDD to Master, I put back both of the original IDE cables to their original connections on the Mboard Primary IDE to HDD and Mboard Secondary IDE to CD.  Then moved jumper on HDD from Cable select to Master.

Is there anything than can be done to determine if a HDD is failing or is it one of those things that will decide to die at the most inopportune time?

[Geek-9pm]

If you can not duplicate the problem, just ignore it.
But start working now on a backup plan.
Which requires a spare drive anyway.

[Puter Moron]

I kind of thought that would be the case.  The Mboard for the computer is a Gigabyte GA-8S661FXM-775 and in addition to the Primary & Secondary IDE's there are two SATA connectors.  I know that the SATA HDD's have smaller cables but other than that are SATA HDD's more advantageous than the IDE HDD's?

[dahlarbear]

1.  IDE Hard Drive Connections.  If that's a newer IDE hard drive (ATA66/100/133), you need to be using an 80-wire ribbon cable, not the older 40-wire cable.  That would probably resolve the "disc read error".  The 40-wire cable cannot reliably handle the faster speeds.

Cable select on the older 40-wire cable is also "dicey".  Reference below says "master" position on older cable is generally "middle" connector (which is the reverse of the newer 80-wire cable) or to see manufacturer documentation for your specific hard drive.

See: http://www.mikeshardware.com/howtos/howto_connect_ide_hd.html

2.  Hard Drive Diagnostics.  You may go to the drive manufacturer website and download the "free" bootable hard drive diagnostics.

See Hard Drive Diagnostics Tools and Utilities (TTID #287).

3.  Check Disk Utility.  For the Windows XP operating system, the "chkdsk" command may be used to verify and if necessary repair the integrity of your file system.  This command may be invoked either within the Windows XP operating system or Windows XP Recovery Console.

See:  Recovery Console Commands.

[Salmon Trout]

But start working now on a backup plan.
Which requires a spare drive anyway.

Which everybody should be doing anyway, IMHO

[Puter Moron]

The IDE cables I used are 80 wire ribbon cables.

I burned an image of the HDD diagnostics tool from Western Digital which is the brand of the HDD.  I ran the extended test and it passed w/no errors. 

I also tried running checkdisk from the recovery console and when it was done it gave a message to the effect that it had finished and did not display any kind of results.  So I ran checkdisk from Windows and when that finished I clicked on the view results and it said that it passed.  I assume that if there were any errors checkdisk would have displayed them. 

I know that just because Western Digital test and checkdisk passed does not mean the HDD is on its way out.  Could be an intermittent thing until the HDD finally decides to end it all.

Is any one brand of HDD better than another?  Is SATA better than IDE?

[Computer_Commando]

1.  The IDE cables I used are 80 wire ribbon cables.
2.  I know that just because Western Digital test and checkdisk passed does not mean the HDD is on its way out.  Could be an intermittent thing until the HDD finally decides to end it all.
3.  Is any one brand of HDD better than another? 
4.  Is SATA better than IDE?

1.  That eliminates the cable as the issue.
2.  Very true.  I've had a WD fail to read or write from time to time and it finally SMART failed today.
3.  I don't believe so.  I use Seagates and Western Digitals.
4.  SATA is replacing IDE (now also referred to as PATA).  Technically, it better because no parallel data ribbon cable and the speeds can be much higher.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_ATA

[dahlarbear]

Western Digital distinguishes between a hard drive "jumper" setting for a master which is the only device on the cable (Single) and a master which will share the cable with a slave device (Dual Master).  Just a thought...

See The difference between master/slave and cable select jumper settings.

[patio]

Congrats Leet........

[dahlarbear]

Thanks...  I almost hate to move on from this "ephemeral" state...  Oops... too late!