Hard Drive problem

So I go to turn on my PC yesterday and it doesn't get past BIOS. It goes through the checks before the IDE check and then hangs. Sure enough, when I removed my IDE drive and left my SATA one in, it went fine, and I was able to boot into my SATA drive running linux.

The problem here is I have data on the IDE drive (which ran windows) and I'd like to be able to at least mount it in Linux and copy out the files I want. When I plug it in and turn it on, though, it can't get through the BIOS (always stops at that one place, and doesn't let me go into the BIOS setup or let me boot from a disk or anything, pressing keys does nothing, it would seem).

I have no idea what triggered this, I didn't do anything weird or install anything weird last time I was in windows (the day before this happened), and I keep a clean system, so, aside from the obvious reasons, we can rule out a software explanation.

It must be hardware, but everything works fine and I can still boot into linux with no problems. Is it the drive or something? Any suggestions?

 

What are your system specs?

 

AMD Athlon64 3200
Epox 8KDAI mobo
512 mb RAM
ATI Radeon 9700 PRO
Samsung 80gb (the problem drive)
Western Digital 250gb SATA

 

Do you have another computer you can drop the IDE drive into to see if it duplicates the problem? I'd start there.

You might, just as a desperate, quick measure, reset your BIOS

Also, is the drive jumpered to Cable Select? See if the jumper is still there...

 

I don't have another PC handy at the moment, I flashed the BIOS and I tried using a different IDE cable but that changed nothing. There appears to be a jumber in, set vertically to the far left. It looks like this...

[.][][][]
[.][][][]

 

Apparently "Cable Select" is either

[][.][][]
[][.][][]

or

[][.][][]
[][.][.][.]

Is Cable select something I want? Do you think it would be possible to put another HDD in and set this one as slave? Would that change anything?