i have replaced my drive cable due to "no hard disk found" error and am still getting the message. I am questioning whether or not I got the right cable into the right pins.

i have attached a pic.

very distraught....

The pic looks OK, but it doesn't show the most likely place for an error: where the cable connects to the motherboard. Odds are, that's where it's attached wrong (if it's attached wrong).

the motherboard doesn't have the extra pins for the slave/master jumper and seems fairly straight forward. Is is possible to put the cable on backwards?

and seems fairly straight forward.

Except that, when put on correctly, it will tend to overlap the display cable slightly. If there's space between the display cable and the IDE header, then it's probably off by one pin. Triple check it.

it does slightly overlap the display cable...

what are my options now? is it a bad hard drive? is the board fried?

i will have silence in my car now...oh the humanity!

what are my options now? is it a bad hard drive? is the board fried?

The known possible problems that can cause drive failure are listed here. At the moement, I don't have any more information to offer you than what's there.

Have you tried plugging in only one drive at a time?

As far as I can recognize anything on the picture, everything seems fine...the rightmost 4 pins (2 x 2) have to be visible, they are only used when using more than one drive, to mark the master and the slave drive (speak the first and the second one)

Post a boot log - that'll help identify the problem.

It is most likely that you have a dry solder joint on the IDE header on the mainboard. I'd need to bring the player in for service if that is the case.You might also have a failed drive. Try just one drive at a time. Remember to remove the slave jumper when trying the second drive and also that the second drive doesn't have any software installed, but you'll know if it is working from the boot log.

i plugged in the 30 gig master drive alone and it booted up fine. i then removed the slave jumper from the 18 gig and tried that one alone and got the same 'disk not found' error so i guess we have found the culprit.

How do i get a boot log? Hyperterminal?

Is it certainly the hard drive or could it still be the solder joint? How long does it take to service? Thanks so much for your help.

p.s. can i still run the player off of that one drive?

i plugged in the 30 gig master drive alone and it booted up fine.

Good. That rules out a dry solder joint on the mainboard, and rules out a mis-plugged cable.

i then removed the slave jumper from the 18 gig and tried that one alone and got the same 'disk not found' error so i guess we have found the culprit.

Did you plug it into the same spot on the cable as the 30-gig drive was when it worked? If so, I would agree that the 18 gig drive is now suspect.

How do i get a boot log? Hyperterminal?

Complete instructions are here. Do it with the good drive in place so you can see what it's supposed to look like when it boots from a good drive. Then try it with the suspected-bad drive in place and see what's different about the boot log.

Was the 18 gig drive ever properly "built" using the builder-image?

The slave drive does not usually have software instaled, then IIRC, the player will give the no drive error. Once you've got a bootlog, post it so we can see why it is failing.

Average turnaround on repairs is 5-10 days.

You can run the player off just one drive without a problem.

attached is the boot log for the bad drive that throws the "disk not found" error

here is the boot log for the good disk

i am currenlty running off of the 30 gig drive. there are some odd things occuring of course.

it will display a song but will not play it. i assume this means that the database still lists this song, but it is not found because it is on the bad disk,

How can i see what's left on the 30 gig and rebuild the database. I synched up in emplode with no problems with just the one disk but it still listed all the songs (i think).

how can i be sure that what's in the database is also on the drive. there would have only been about 6 gigs on the other drive because my mp3 collection is only 36.7 gigs.

thanks for the help!

Your "bad drive" attachment contains SEVERAL boot logs, so I assume the final one is the only one from the single-bad-drive setup?

-ml

i noticed that too. is it possible that it kept trying to re-boot b/c of the bad drive and that's why there are duplicates? or does hyperterminal save all that stuff from previous sessions with the player?

or does hyperterminal save all that stuff from previous sessions with the player?

Correct. Hyperterminal saves all that stuff from previous sessions with the player.

It is saved directly in the ".ht" file itself. The only way to clear it is to erase the .ht file, create it again from scratch, then tag the file as read-only before connecting to the player the first time.