Hi everybody. All of a sudden my computer doesnt recognise 2 IDE HDs within the machine. I have one SATA as third master and the other drives one as primary master and primary slave. I have been using this for about one year now. The bios also didnt detect them. What could be the problem? Thanks a lot. Im using Win XP sp2.

Check all (internal) connections, if you feel competent.

If this doesn't fix things, it's most unlikely that two drives have failed simultaneously, so it may [gulp] be the motherboard, which can be messy and expensive to fix. Get your PC to a competent repair shop if you can't diagnose the fault yourself.

Drives not being recognized can be a sign of a low system battery.  Don't know if that's your problem, but it's a damn cheap fix.

John

Are the drives powering up?  It could be the part of the power supply that energizes the hard drives. 

I would contact the PC Manufacturer's Tech Support.  If you built the system yourself, then contact the Motherboard's Manufacturer.

It shouldn't make a difference since it was working before, but try changing the pin setting on the back of the drive just in case.  For example, if the pins are manually set to primary and slave, then try changing both drive to cable select.  If it's already set to cable select, then try changing one to primary and the other one to slave.

Or, if you have access to another system nearby, try connecting the drive to that.  Conversely, if you have a known working drive, then connect that to your system using the ide channel which was used by the drive you just replaced.  All you are trying to do here is narrow down the possible causes as much as you can to see if it's the drives that actually failed.

If the drive still fails to recognize on another system, then unplug the drive and let it sit idle for at least a day before giving it another try.

Hope that helps.

This just happened to me last week.  Both internal drives not recognized.  It turned out to be just a loose connection.  The fix was easy: open up the case, and push the connections in tight.  Been great ever since. 

As someone else said, it's not likely to be failed hard drives, since both are unreadable.  If it's not loose connections, try changing the cable.  (Usually a master and slave hard drive are hooked up to the same cable.)

if both went at the same time (depending on your cable scheme), I'd check the motherboard end first. You might want to see if BIOS sees them as well. It's kinda iffy for 2 to die at the same time..I fixed servers for 9 years, and only a coupla times did I see that happen..

He said Bios didn't detect them.

My money's on a loose connection.  If not, a bad cable.  IME, cables go bad more often than motherboards. 

If the IDE controller is on the motherboard, Check to see if you have an second IDE slot available that you can switch too after you've tried reseating the cables on the first one. It could be the Cables, the onboard controller, the IDE slot that you're using or as suggested the battery or power sources.

If it's the IDE controller, you can get a PCI IDE card - probably cheaper and definitely less hassle than replacing the mainboard.

Thanks to all...

It was a conflict on the Jumper settings. For some reason they worked fine for an year...but my guess is that the infamous w32.polip virus that infested my machine some days prior may have corrupted some archive which allowed them to function in that fashion...

I decided to format the HD and reinstall everything...a pain in the neck, but...