"lost" primary master after PC crash

hello again,

this is the same PC from this thread

i was playing games on Kongregate when i heard a few mechanic clicks from the tower (about 3, kind of sounded like opening and closing a metallic box) I paused to try to figure out what was up but the sound stopped and nothing seemed to happen, so i went on with my game at the 1st or maybe second click Screen went blank and PC was rebooting but instead of windows starting i got this message:

i went into bios to make sure the boot order was correct and it was unchanged, but i noticed there was no Primary master only drives listed are my optical drive and my slave.

i think something similar happened a while back and the Tech told me my motherboard is acting up.

Id like to know if its dead or if something can be done to bring it back to life.

Edit:
earlier i booted my PC using the ubuntu live CD and posted my problem after i finished i decided to try to run PC normally once more to see if i had missed any relevant info and surprise windows started normally, but the question remains what happened.

 

the drive in question is a Hitachi.

1st time i tried to test it i got:

Code:

0x20  Selected device not present

then i tried to test the Western Digital drive it found no errors

I tried the Hitachi Drive again and at that point it found the drive and the test found no error either.
I only ran the quick tests.

edit: i was wondering if the system doesn't always see the HD it could be a loose cable but because pf how all this happened I am thinking thats not the problem could it be the MB?

 

oh ya forgot to update on that:
-I was not able to get any arctic silver, but i did get paste and after application/ reassembly there definitely is improvement. (whether its the paste, the thorough clean up of the PC or the re-ranging of the cables in the tower idk)

- As far as the cut cable go:
from PSU to the HD in question from HD there are 2 other plugs. the cut cable is between the HD and the 1st extension, and Im not using either one of those.
I also checked both power and IDE cables on both sides and neither is loose.
(your description of the cables is on the mark).

 

this is getting rediculous, makes me think of an episode of house.






i was re-encoding a video with Tmpeg when the PC froze for a few seconds (I think i heard something wind down all most sounded like a sigh) when normal speed restored i got those messages, and now Data disk doesn't show in my computer.

 

I had a similar problem once with the motherboard not seeing a CD-RW drive, which I later found out (after the PC had expired) that the cable had been connected into a dud port. Is it possible to connect the HDD to another IDE/SATA port inside the PC?

 

i check to see if there are alternative ports.
but i had 2 different HDs disappear on me, so 2 Dud ports?

 

Unless the entire mobo is dead, I agree, that sounds unlikely. But many mobos have at least 4 ports, and you can try and plug one into a space where the CD drive is?

 

yeah i thought about optical drive "port" that could solve additional issues with my System disk but my Data disk is Sata and I have to see if there is an alternate.

PS ever since PC doesnt detect the data drive its extreemly slow at start up (b4 windows) you know at the 1st page where it displays your System specs (ram gpu and drives). It hangs quite a bit on the drive detection process.

edit: there was a 2nd sata port and pluging my data drive solved it FOR NOW.
i just hope i wont have any new problems till im ready to buy a replacement, meenwhile ill shop arround to see if i can find myself a MoB that is compatible with my system.

 

SATA in itself is not a problem, assuming that all the drive slots in the PC are SATA, as most (if not all) modern disc drives (not hard drives) are SATA nowadays, and I only have SATA ports in my PC...

 

no need to worry about this PC, i believe its now officially dead.

i lost my Data disk again so i decided to reboot.
Upon restart I noticed on the start up screen that 2 IDEs were detected + the SATA.
logged in windows, and yes both drives were present, idk what 2nd IDE was about allthough at this point there was that clicking sound again it was non stop and rather fast, sceen went black PC was rebooting.

this time clicking sound started earlier and PC rebooted before even logging in windows.

so i think its dead.

Edit: this is a pretty old PC (about 5 maybe 6 years) we are talking PIV 3 GHZ).

 

If it's dead, keep hold of the hard-drives etc and put them in the new PC, if possible (IDE might be hard, the SATA will go in all new PCs)

 

small update while shopping around for an old MoB one of the techs i talked to suggested i bring my PC and show it to him before i spend any $$$ on such an old machine.

his diagnostic the MoB froze due to power problem, (that resulted in a cascade of events: a crash which caused some problems with the System Disk that resulted in a other crash etc...) he then took out both of the drives installed them to his machine and did some tests the IDE had a few bad cluster the SATA was fine.

im currently using the PC in question (defragmenting everything). We changed that cut cable and next step is to test the PSU.

anyways thank you all for your help i will update this thread once we have reached a satisfactory fix.

 

i just hook up PC, seems to run smoother (during start up at least, its only been on for 10 minutes).

I was disappointed when tech decided no need to test PSU cause it was running fine yesterday when we were working on PC.


so i guess now i can only wait and see how things go.