strange floppy behaviour

[Viscon]

just got new barracuda IV, installed it and cloned the entire content from old barracuda II with norton ghost.

everything went fine, the system booted like charm (winme), but i can't access the floppy.
when i try, the system gets frozen, leaving me the only option which is reset.
mouse and keyboard don't react.

now, i took off new drive and put back my old barracuda II and got no problem at all.
the floppy opens fine.
and it's exactly the same file system on both drives. (ghosted)

unbelievible but it looks like new hdd causes floppy to freeze the system.

thnx for any reply on this matter.
http://www.PCGuide.com/ubb/frown.gif

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Viscon

[diurnal]

Hmm good question, can you do a clean install instead of ghosting the drive. I used ghost, i am very impatience, so i never got that far, so i dont like it. But i ussually just back data up and reload software , i know its a hasssle and all but it might be the only way it will coexist withe the floppy. I think sometthing in yoiur registry is causing it to freeze, so if you have a clean registry , i t might fix the problem.

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Sledgehammer will save the day!

[Viscon]

thnx for reply, diurnal.

1. clean install didn't help.

2. i don't think it's a registry or any system configuration issue, because all was mirrored from another hdd, barracuda II, which gives no problems with floppy access.

i tried cloning, dumping to ghost image and then restoring from it, still no go. i even restored ghost image onto the old drive to make sure the image file is not corrupted, and old hdd works fine.

another thing: i CAN boot with floppy. no matter if it's the new or old hdd.

how come the one particular hard drive may cause this failure?

http://www.PCGuide.com/ubb/frown.gif

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Viscon

[Rick]

If you are using an anti virus program like Nortons anti virus
I would suggest disabling it.
The boot with the new drive installed .
Boot into safe mode.
Us device manager to remove both the floppy drive and the floppy controller .
shut down the system and reboot.
when it finds new hardware is should reinstall the drivers for both.

I this also fails to solve the problem I’d also try to remove the HDD from device manager.
Again shut down and restart allowing the system to find new hard ware.

A complete reinstall is the last resort and should be avoided.
Especially with only adding a new hard drive

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To ERR is HUMAN
To REALLY screw things UP, YOU NEED a COMPUTER !

[Viscon]

thnx, Rick, i tried what you suggest but the problem remains.
there are no irq conflicts
all programs and games work fine

i tried these configs too:
1. single boot - winme
2. single boot - winxp
3. dualboot - winme / xp

in all 3 cases the problem occurs.
must be some hardware issue but i still can't believe it's a harddrive, since everything else works fine.

my specs:

my specs:
abit bx133-raid
pentium III 850E
matrox g450 dualhead 32mb ddr
sb pci 128
3com etherlink pci 3c905b-tx

storage devices:

seagate barracuda IV on ide3 highpoint uata100 as bootable master

seagate uata66 on ide1 master

cdrw plex 16/10/40a on ide2 master

http://www.PCGuide.com/ubb/frown.gif

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Viscon

[Rick]

From this point by the way you have the system setup.
I can only suggest contacting the mother board manufacturer and or add-in ide controller maker if it’s not built onto the mother board.

sounds like a bios update may be in order.. Or new/updated drivers for the ide controllers

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To ERR is HUMAN
To REALLY screw things UP, YOU NEED a COMPUTER !

[Viscon]

Rick, when i take off the new barracudaIV and replace it with my old barracudaII there are no problems at all.

Situation is an old drive works 100% but the new one works 99% which is all is fine but floppy access.
exactly the same systems and same configuration (ghosted).

do i need any special drivers for barracudaIV while not for barracudaII?
there's nothing about it on seagate nor abit sites.
seagate says new drives are backward compatible.

thnx again for reply


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Viscon

[Rick]

Is it possible that the new drive is so new that not many people are encountering it yet?

If you don’t need the floppy on a regular basis I’d be tempted to disable it in the bios.
Disable the floppy seek also and let it run.
Report the problem to both companies and see if they can find a solution.

It is possible that you will need to update your bios and or the windows drivers for your chipset and controllers .
In a number of cases to attain backward compatibility you have to limit or reduce the drives capacity

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To ERR is HUMAN
To REALLY screw things UP, YOU NEED a COMPUTER !

[Viscon]

i think i know what's up.

here's what happened:
i clean installed winxp. all went fine but after one hour floppy again froze the system.
i had to reset as usual and scandisk stopped at 4% during bootup.
aha, it's time to diagnose the drive again with seatools disc diagnostic.
and guess what, it stopped too, right at the first short test:

here's the log generated

-----------------------------------------------------------------
_ _ _
/ / (_)
_\ \ \ DIAGATA.EXE Version 3.02.1011ML
(_)_/_/
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Copyright (c) 2000 by Seagate Technology, Inc. All rights reserved.
Timer Resolution: 0.000122
Short Test Begin: 15-Dec-2001 04:46:39
Cable Test - Passed
Buffer Test - Passed
Identify Data
Model Number: ST320011A
Serial Number: 3HT0TLR8
Firmware Revision: 3.05
Default CHS: 16383-16-63
Current CHS: 16383-16-63
Current Capacity: 16514064 Sectors
Total Capacity: 39102336 Sectors
80 Conductor Cable Reported
ID Method: Unknown
SMART Check: Passed
DST - Errors - Status: 07
SMART Check: Passed
Short Test Failed: 15-Dec-2001 04:46:48

then i saw a screen saying that there's a severe defect on the hdd so it must be replaced.

i must say i did that test before and it passed. looks like the hdd was dying slowly.

well, now i'm back with my barracuda II which works perfectly.

and that was my second attempt with this model. first one didn't even want me to partition. looks like a bad series.

thnx again Rick for taking your time.




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Viscon