HDD not found on boot = disk error

i recently received a western digital 160gb, as a replacement for a broken western digital 120gb, from western digital.
however on boot the HDD is sometimes not found and instead a little clicking noise can be heard, which in turn leads to the primary slave not being found and then a disk error.

usually if i simply turn it off then back on again, then it works fine however sometimes I have to do this multiple times, sometimes i have to turn it off and leave it for a few minutes and sometimes I have to open the case and push all the cables into the back of the HDD and DVDRW a bit more... to me the cables don't feel as though they've come loose and so really this is an exercise of ritual rather than anything constructive, yet it seems to do the job.

once the HDD is recognised the PC works fine and dandy but i'd like to avoid this failure as it is happening more and more.

is this an issue with the CPU, data cables, power cables, HDD, DVDRW, RAM?

my system is an asus pundit w/ intel 2.8ghz, dual 512mb ram, western digital 160gb, sony 8x dvdrw

I have heard of it that it's due to incompatibility with mother.

Perhaps it was western digital hds which select mother.

And to avoid this, change jumper to Cable Select or so, reportedly. Of course, no warranty.

thanks. i'll give that a go and see if theres an improvement.

out of interest the mobo is ASUS P4R8L and the HDD is WD1600BB

changed the jumper to CS but the no recognition whatsoever. I then went back in and switched the HDD back to Master and it booter immediately. This morning i went to turn it on and it and it didn't recognise the HDD again, i turned it off and on again and all was fine.

(^^;?(And finally?)

It seemed to be the case with the said HD from IDE(not ATA).

Perhaps a trifling incompatibility, caused by electrical supply, boot-sequence, and so forth.

thanks for the diagnosis

so is there a resolution?, as I'd really like to not have to turn on my pc several times to get it to work every day, besides getting a more compatible HDD as its not financially viable. e.g. new cables or whatever?

(^^; ( I think everything must have resolution. )

You'll find the way in time. (Mariah)

Then I reasoned this case,

When the Computer boot, all the devices are power-suppllied by way of power cable or on-board-line.

Taking a few or several seconds, the devices spin up. These are not recognized as devices until this spin-up is completed. At this moment bios using I/O ports by way cable and the like send signal to the devices. in order to recognize. So much so that, if at the said moment the spin-up is not completed, the device cannot return the signal. Hence UNRECOGNIZED.

Thinking carefully, UNRECOGNITION is not limited to HD or WesternDigital.. It is sometimes the case with other HDDs or any devices.

By the way, when some device is unrecognizeed, all the manual says "restart". Why "restart"make effect in the same configuration? I suppose that it relates to the said critical timing or moment when the spin-up is completed.

While someone changed jumper to cable select and it worked fine. if this is true. There must be the reason and some clue in it. Perhaps if the cable is selected, it will take time to decide which master is. So that the spin-up is in time, I guess. But recent ATA100 cable is much faster than former IDE cable. So it didn't worked in your case. maybe

That is to say, the resolution is to match the timing. by all means. Some change may help the situation. putting the middle connector into motherboard and cable selected. or using the cable as long as possible.

Change the electric cable to nearest to power. (Effective?(^^;?)

The above consideration may not resolve the problem, but will give some hint, I hope.

It relies on your ideas, because I don't have the stuff to experiment for the moment. Necessity is the mother of Invension.

thnaks for the info. i think i'm going to take it to the shop for a general checkup, by an expert, as i now have multiple problems and i'm in over my head.