Western Digital HD Long BootUp Problem

[darkwraith007]

Hello to all,

I have a slight problem with my computer. Nothing is damaged or really messed up and everything (performance-wise) seems to run smoothly, especially when gaming for extended periods of time. However its the really ridiculously long bootup time of my computer that's killing me, and I believe my hard drive is the culprit. This problem only occurred once I put a Western Digital HD into the computer (as a slave). Then when my master hard drive crapped out (old drive), I switched the WD Drive to a Master drive, switched the cables and the jumpers and everything.

Its a WDC WD400BB-00DEA0

When I bootup my computer from a cold boot, my computer won't read the hard drive at all. I have to do a Ctrl-Alt-Del while its doing the first BIOS screen, THEN it finally will read the drive. But it takes ~20 seconds or so before it finally recognizes my hard drive, and my computer just sits there in the meantime. Then it goes through the rest of the BIOS and then the list of partitions comes up after another ~30 second wait. Its just ridiculous how long it sits at a black screen before the boot menu comes up (I'm dual-booting, 2 partitions, both with WinXP, one's a backup partition for when something goes sour).

I used HDTune to check the SMART Info and the hard drive is reading just fine and perfectly healthy in everything, just about as close to brand-new as you can get in EVERY value.

Then I even installed a Hard Drive cooler (2 fans) to the hard drive and though the temperature is a LOT cooler for it, its still doing the same thing, so heat isn't the issue either. I even replaced the hard drive cable and even the actual jumper (putting a new jumper in the same master slot as before). All to no avail. O_O

I'm not sure what to do anymore, really. I'm probably going to replace this hard drive, but perhaps I can trace it to a recent event. There was a *very* powerful surge one time, and it completely burned through my surge protector, but it did set off the fuse and shut down my computer very quickly. Upon getting a new surge protector and checking things out, everything seemed operational, but perhaps the surge did something seriously bad to my hard drive that's not showing up in the SMART info.

I'd appreciate any help/tips/advice. Thank you for your time.

[Glenn9999]

When I bootup my computer from a cold boot, my computer won't read the hard drive at all. I have to do a Ctrl-Alt-Del while its doing the first BIOS screen, THEN it finally will read the drive. But it takes ~20 seconds or so before it finally recognizes my hard drive, and my computer just sits there in the meantime.

Try running the WD Data Lifeguard diagnostic program (available from Western Digital's website) and see what it says.

In the absence of a problem indicated by the WD program, and the other stuff you've mentioned would make me think a possible BIOS problem relating to recognition of the drive, though. What kind of computer/mainboard is this? Are the settings okay for the drive (primary master I presume) in the BIOS? Has there been a noted problem with this drive as master relating to this particular system?

[darkwraith007]

Thank you for your speedy reply! You rock! =D

As per your inquiry, I'm using:

ASUS P4P800-VM motherboard, with latest chipset drivers and such.

The newest BIOS doesn't work right so I stuck with what I have. The problem occurred even before the upgrade and subsequent 'downgrade' back to what was on the official motherboard driver cd. I had thought that updating the BIOS would solve the problem but it just f-ed things up instead so I had to downgrade back to what I had before.

Yes, the drive is a primary master, and I have checked and rechecked the jumper settings, they're fine.

I installed all the WD Diagnostic tools and unless I do the full scan for bad sectors, everything seems to check out just fine. As I've said, SMART checks out and everything. I might just do a bad-sectors scan overnight and see what pops up.

I'm relegating this to a hardware issue, either BIOS or the drive itself, somehow maybe incompatible with my motherboard? Or perhaps its because its using Ultra-DMA 5 instead of Ultra-DMA 2 like my DVD-Rom drive is doing.

Either way, this drive is getting ripped out and I'll just install a new one anyways, this old one is 40 GB and is overdue for a replacement anyways as I need more space.

Thanks anyways, though.

Thank you for your time.

Edited January 1, 2008 by darkwraith007