Problem reading WD drive

[HigherMakoto]

I have this 120 gig Western Digital drive that will not work when plugged in the slave position at all. When it's in the master position it'll work, but then whatever is in the slave position will not work, I can't even see it in the bios. I have a Machspeed VIA P4M266 chipset motherboard. I've tried changing IDE cables, switching the IDE slots, changing jumper settings, but I can't get this one hard drive to work at the same time as my other drives. I have a 250 gig (this is the hd with the OS on it: Windows XP sp 2) drive and a 60 gig drive (both Maxtor) and when plugged in together, they work fine. All my data in on the 120 hd so abandoning it is not really an option. Please help, this is driving me crazy.

 

[matguy]

WD drives can be picky about what they slave off of. Sometimes the master drive needs to be set as "Master - Slave Present" or such it that option exists, and I've seen some that just won't play together no matter what you do. If you can make the WD drive master to one of the Maxtor drives, that may work, just do it on the secondary port if you don't want it to be the boot drive. You can also make it master on the secondary port with a CD-Rom slaved off it, if you so choose, or try to make the cd master and see if it'll slave off it.

 

[HigherMakoto]

I think I'll try putting it on a cable with a CD drive. As my friend said, "poor performance is better then no performance."