Barracuda XT, Barracuda, Barracuda Green, DiamondMax and other desktop SATA and IDE drives

[shifty]

I have been getting Primary Slave Disk failure on the rare occasion when I try to boot Windows XP. This error only happens very occasionally, maybe twice out of ten startups. A simple reset (power on/off) will allow it to boot normally.There are no other problems, drive is fast, quiet, and a normal temperature.

The harddrive model number is st3320620A, it's a new (less than a year old) 300GB drive.

I have tried SeaTools and it appears to pass all tests.

[MrButkus]

Assuming it's a ATA HD. How did you make the drive a slave?  Some MB are picky about jumpers and where the HD is on the cable.

The master is the last connection.  Some MBs do fine with Cable Select  CS.

Do you have a ATA 100 cable ?  Are the pins on the external good.

Seems to be a boot issue, do you have a time out or pause in your BIOS to allow the MB to find the drives ?

[shifty]

Well it always detects the drive, just occasionally it stops at the black screen which shows all your hardware being recognized. I'm not sure what kind of cable it is.

[Melonade]

its like mrbutkus said...let me clarify a bit

here is an ata 100 cable

make sure the drive is connected to the grey connector in the middle of the cable

if your cable is not like this, go to a pc store and get one, they are cheap

make sure there is no jumper on the drive, that is the setting for slave

[shifty]

Well the tag on the cable I use to connect my HDs reads: "Ultra ATA Cable" and my failing drive is connected to the middle where it says slave.

As for the jumpers, I'm not quite sure I understand. I believe I have it in the second (of 4) positions. 

But why would any of htis matter? 90% of the time it works perfectly, just occasionally it stalls my computer from starting.

[MrButkus]

I would run a check on it with software from Segate/Maxtor.

There are non-damaging check it can make.  If it comes back with an error number.. then you can go for a repair.