[clue-tech] Help with 2 hard drives on same IDE

[Angelo Bertolli]

A recently installed a 160 GB hard drive (seagate) in my machine, along 
side my other 160 GB hard drive (western digital), and now all hell has 
broken loose.  I had to install a new power supply to ensure I had 
enough for both drives and my burners.  It worked perfectly for about 1 
week, during which time, I didn't even get around to even formatting the 
extra hard drive yet (so there were no data transfers to the new hard 
drive, and certainly no transfers between the two drives).  Then one day 
the power had gone out in my place, so I promptly put in a surge 
protector before it came back on and destroyed everything.  I tried to 
turn on my computer (was off before power went out), and there was a 
LITTLE bit of power.  I heard some clicking noises so I immediately 
unplugged the machine to get it to stop.  (Maybe this is irrelevant.)

After that, Windows would not boot--always failing at a certain point in 
boot.  (However Linux booted fine.)  I started to suspect the hard drive 
because it was always rebooting at the same point, and also flashed a 
blue screen sometimes that I could see.  So I booted the install CD and 
tried to run the repair console.  The problem is that at this point the 
partition looked "Damaged or Unpartitioned" to Windows, and therefore 
cannot be corrected.

So next I decided to backup all my data to my second hard drive (just 
newly installed), and reinstall Windows.  The first time I tried, 
Windows couldn't even partition the drive correctly:  it ended up making 
novell netware partition and essentially screwing up the partition table.

So then I repartitioned the drive with Linux, and then tried to install 
Windows in the windows partition.  This "worked" but when it boots it 
says that NTLDR is missing (which is the operating system loader).

My last attempt to reinstall involves me becoming suspicous about having 
two hard drives on the same cable, so I removed the other one.  Still 
the same problem.  However, I think having the second hard drive is 
probably what messed it up.  I asked around and did a lot of research to 
decide on how to set up my IDE cables, and everyone seemed to say that 
they should be on the same cable.

After trying to install about a dozen times, I think I might have a good 
idea that the damaged portion of the disk is well within the first 500 
MB of the disk, so I may partition that 500 MB away and just start there.

So I guess this is just a general cry for help about any information or 
experience that someone may have with putting 2 different brand hard 
drives on the same IDE cable.  Did I permanently mess up my drive?  I'm 
not confident that it's safe to use anymore i.e. I'm not confident that 
it won't mess up Linux too if I start using it.  Should I just always 
put hard drives on different IDE chains?  I've heard that the second IDE 
on the motherboard is also a virtual IDE and that originally there was 
only one IDE.

Sorry, I know this is a hodge podge of stuff, but I'm just utterly 
mystified about how this kind of stuff is still happening in 2005, and 
really don't know what to do next.  I might just try sending the hard 
drive back to western digital and see if they'll replace it.

Angelo

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