Drive Cable Problems
Hi Fred, I LOVE Langalist! Just thought I'd get that out of the way. The terabyte server is something I'll tackle this year. A question I hope you'll have time to answer: 3 months ago I started to experience a bad boot. I'd get to BIOS, then get the black screen with "Can't find primary 0 HD" and "Can't find secondary 1 HD" or words to that effect. For several weeks, I'd open the case (after rebooting several times with the same result) re seat the ribbon cable to the motherboard and the drives, and it would boot. (Dell 4550, XP home, BTW) Finally, that stopped working, and it would only boot intermittently.
I bought a new primary drive, took out the secondary, installed Acronis (great product, thanks for the recommendation!) transferred the contents of the old primary to the new primary HD, then installed it and the old secondary. I think this was around December. This morning, I got the black screen again! I went into the case, re seated the cable, (a new one, that came with the new HD) and it then booted. This feels like deja vu all over again... Any ideas? ---Wayne C. Allen
You don't say where you're from, Wayne, but I'm betting it's humid there: Your problem sounds like corrosion on the electrical contacts, to me: When you reseat or replace the cable, the mechanical movement scrapes through the corrosion and re-establishes a good electrical contact. Things work for a while, but new corrosion forms and eventually messes up the contacts.
This kind of trouble used to be fairly common in old PCs, but is far less frequent now, except in locations with a humidity problem--- and especially in ocean-side locales, where the salt air can be brutal on metals.
The best corrective action is to use a good "contact cleaner" to remove the corrosion ( http://www.google.com/search?q=electrical+contact+cleaner ); and perhaps to add a dab of long-lasting anti-corrosion substance (eg http://www.google.com/search?q=stabilant ) to the contacts before reassembly. If you do live near water, the larger local boat shops probably stock what you need, as marine electronics have to deal with exactly this kind of problem all the time.
After that, it's prevention: If possible, keep the PC in a climate-conditioned space. And if that's not possible, simply plan to open the PC and clean the contacts from time to time, on whatever schedule works to remove the corrosion *before* you start seeing errors.
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