Hello all;
I have a 2 year old computer running Bodhi Linux 1.4. I've got an IDE cd burner which works great. I've got 4 SATA ports on my mobo. A few months ago, port 0 started randomly disappearing from Bios and pcman filemanager. Now port 01 is going. Open the case, fiddle with red cables, and sometimes they come back, sometimes they stay, and then mysteriously disappear again. Sometimes when I reboot, they show up, and sometimes they don't. Right now, I have only 1 HD-the main one-working, while the second drive for storage is AWOL again, as is the new dvd burner. Both SATA drives are fairly new, too about 3-5 months old. When they run, they run and burn very well. Everything else on the motherboard seems to work okay-sound, video, ect.
Is this bad cables, bad ports, or haunted drives? I've looked at SATA to IDE adapters, as the IDE burner works, as well as PCI cards to add new ports to the system. What would be the problem, and the best and cheapest solution?
Thanks in advance!
P.S. Now I really think this machine is haunted. About 20 minutes after I posted this, and was just browsing a web page, the previously silent dvd burner light came on,and the drive started whirring. I opened the door, shut it, and it stopped. About 5 minutes later, it started whirring again, then stopped.