The chances of this are so remote.
This morning my system took ages to boot and pressing TAB during POST told me that it was having trouble detecting any hard drives beyond the 1st - my main one (Vista's 1 and 2).
Indeed they didn't appear in the computer at all and when I checked, not in the BIOS either.
I checked all my connections - OK. Unplugged them one by one as I had no idea which physical drive was which inside the case. Finally got that sorted out and now the system boots OK to the original main drive as long as I keep the other 2 (1 500GB had 2 Win 7 partitions on it, and 1 1TB storage drive) disconnected.
They are not detected if I reconnect them, even in the BIOS.
What are the chances of 2 drives going kerploink at once? I thought perhaps it was the power supply, but they share with other components so that idea is out, I think.
Could my motherboard be in the fritz or should I just go ahead and replace them and hope the new ones work?
No clues in Device Manager either. I even checked EasyBCD (latest build) and that didn't help either.
Thoughts folks before I emigrate to an isolated monastery in Tibet to contemplate my navel for the rest of my days....better that than the current feeling of throwing the damn machine out of the window??
I'm awaiting a call from Alienware Support as they may still be under warranty, not sure. They are Seagate SATA drives by the way. Always used Western Digital before this machine.
EDIT: I've found the culprit is the 1TB storage drive. If that is connected it causes the slow boot and hides both itself and the second OS drive. Hopefully Alienware TS will replace it.
This morning my system took ages to boot and pressing TAB during POST told me that it was having trouble detecting any hard drives beyond the 1st - my main one (Vista's 1 and 2).
Indeed they didn't appear in the computer at all and when I checked, not in the BIOS either.
I checked all my connections - OK. Unplugged them one by one as I had no idea which physical drive was which inside the case. Finally got that sorted out and now the system boots OK to the original main drive as long as I keep the other 2 (1 500GB had 2 Win 7 partitions on it, and 1 1TB storage drive) disconnected.
They are not detected if I reconnect them, even in the BIOS.
What are the chances of 2 drives going kerploink at once? I thought perhaps it was the power supply, but they share with other components so that idea is out, I think.
Could my motherboard be in the fritz or should I just go ahead and replace them and hope the new ones work?
No clues in Device Manager either. I even checked EasyBCD (latest build) and that didn't help either.
Thoughts folks before I emigrate to an isolated monastery in Tibet to contemplate my navel for the rest of my days....better that than the current feeling of throwing the damn machine out of the window??
I'm awaiting a call from Alienware Support as they may still be under warranty, not sure. They are Seagate SATA drives by the way. Always used Western Digital before this machine.
EDIT: I've found the culprit is the 1TB storage drive. If that is connected it causes the slow boot and hides both itself and the second OS drive. Hopefully Alienware TS will replace it.
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