Windows 7: Missing 2nd (IDE) drive, SATA, weird disc sounds

PC is 4 months old. New custom-build.

Primary SATA. Secondary (old) IDE/PATA.

This week, I did move my PC from home in Chicago to here in Maryland. Very carefully. No jostling. Packed in original box with foam padding. I was extra-careful.

Upon boot today, everything was fine, but I noticed the disc light never flickered on/off after the desktop came up as it usually does. The disc light was HARD green the whole time the PC was up. And there's this "scratching" RHYTHMIC sound from one of the 2 drives. Sounds like the old days when a floppy disc was read (that scruff....scruff...scruff... sound).

I open up task manager -> resource monitor and the disc I/O section is dead blank. NOTHING showing at all. I close task manager, play with some windows and come back to RM and now it DOES show the disc I/O activity and all looks normal. But I still get that scruff...pause...scruff...pause. The rhythm is about once per second.

I also noticed that my IDE drive is NOT seen.

So, I restart/reboot and try to get into BIOS and it NEVER gets past the bios screen that shows you which drives have been detected. It just hangs. So, I shut down again, unplug and remove my IDE ribbon cable from the MB. It now boots but very strange.

NOTHING in event viewer (appl, system, security).

I will try physically unplugging the POWER from the IDE drive prior to next boot. Maybe it's trying to spin up and dying??

Ideas?

Confirm that the noise is coming from your IDE drive and if it is put it in the bin it's on its last legs.
Hard drives are not that expensive today BUT recovery of lost data on a failed hard drive is VERY expensive.

With IDE cable detached, I still get that sound. I should have added this piece. Ever since I moved this IDE drive from my old XP machine, when it kicks on (spins up) it has a slight "screech" (not really, more like a scruffffffff) sound. I'd like to get all my music off it AND my Backup Images (WindowsBackupImages). I assume with the IDE detached, the circuitry STILL tries to spin this thing up upon bootup/power up. IOW, I will disconnect POWER to it and see if that stops everything.

Are we to assume that BIOS can somehow HANG indefinitely waiting for a drive to spinup OR respond??

Where is it on the cable middle or end?
Is there anything else on the same cable cd or dvd?
How is it jumpered, Master,slave or cable select?

END of cable

ONLY IDE device in NEW machine is this drive.

Jumpered as Master.

I'm quite surprised it literally hangs BIOS.

Sounds like a dying drive to me, the BIOS hung on the drive detection sequence - it's trying to detect your dying disk (in vain)... Hope you can resuscitate it to get your data...

zzz2496