Help with HDD in bios

Hey all I am having some issues with a Hard Drive this post has nothing to do with W7 but I could use some helo and figured ill ask I am actually running Windows XP SP3.................................................................................

My PC wont boot when my secondary drive is physically plugged in to the mobo. For the record the drive has no OS installed on it and it is a NTSF It just has data on it.

I am running XP SP3 and Im sure I have all the SATA cables going to the right place

When I boot with both HDD connected It just hangs at the Windows loading screen without any bars actually progressing.

I believe the problem is Windows is trying to boot from the second HDD I just don't know how to fix it.

Also last night I took everything out and apart to clean some dust after it was all said and done. I rebooted about 3 times just to make sure. There was no problems. The PC was off all day and when I tried to boot tonight ^^^^ happened.

Some other things I tried.......

I dissconected all other devices such as DVD-rom and external HDD to eliminate problems.

When i go into bios with only primary(WD) and the secondary(Seagate) connected to the mobo, the primary is the only HD detected.

I tried having only the second(Seagate) HD connected to the primary slot on the motherboard and I still get no detection out of the bios?

I am sure the HD (Seagate) is getting power because I can hear it and I eliminated that problem by trying different Power Cables

Has the Seagate seen its days?

Is the WD set as the first boot drive in the BIOS? Does it boot without the Seagate connected? Seagate is a sata drive you say?

In the bios I cant actually set a Master or Primary it does not detect either drive but it does detect the WD on the SATA-0 Port I cant get any detection of the Seagate on any port

The System boots fine without the Seagate connected

Lets assume there are no problems with the Seagate drive.

You need to drill down to the page in the BIOS for the boot order. You should see all the devices connected. ( If you can't, then the device may have a problem.) Then highlite the device with the "arrow key" and "enter" and move it up or down to the desired boot position with either the arrow keys or page up/page down keys,( depending on your machine ). Yours should be something like DVD Rom - WD - Usb - Floppy if you have one.

That leaves us to the Seagate, Can you connect it to another computer to see if it's okay? Or an external drive enclosure?

Seagate makes some decent diagnostic software tools for detecting issues, although I don't know if they'd be of help or not. They can be found here.

Yea my boot Drive (WD) is set as primary on SATA-0 normally the seagate would follow in SATA-1

Now SATA-1 is being shown as an empty slot and the seagate is not being detected but the system wont boot when its connected. weird huh?

Just so you know I have 2 other cd-rom drives connected on SATA-2 and SATA-3 and they work fine

Check your cable connections closely. Also try swapping out the SATA cables, sometimes they come with lousy male connectors and fit loosely in the port.

I know from experience that some brands/suppliers cables fit differently; some are snug, some are loose. Sometimes the least little bump or jiggle will be just enough to affect the connection.

If you have another computer handy, connect the Seagate to it and see what you get.

So if you swap ports over between the drives what happens?. I'm wondering if one of the SATA ports on the MoBo is faulty.

The WD still boots fine even if it is plugged into the second port so I know the ports are ok.

I also tried multiple SATA cables and Power cables so i guess the Seagate is dead I just dont understand what would cause it to crash the system if it is just a secondary drive.

The thing is I dont have another Tower to try the Seagate on, I have an external WD Mybook 500 gig Can I dissasemble this and turn it into an internal drive?

Yes I have done that when the supporting electronics in the enclosure went bad. Not easy to open so be careful.