1 HD Dumping MBR, the other just vanishes.

My setup is a 1TB SATA and a 320gb IDE, both Seagate. On occasion the IDE drive will "Vanish" from the post test. It will not show on the boot menu. This being weird enough, I thought perhaps the drive was old and was just on it's last leg. SO I re-[COLOR=#0072bc !important][COLOR=#0072bc !important]installed [COLOR=#0072bc !important]Windows[/COLOR][/COLOR][/COLOR] 7 on the SATA for main boot. The SATA never disappears from the post BUT will dump the MBR and require repairs. Oddly enough, I can PREDICT this happening. I am a gamer and my latency will begin creeping up in game, slowly at first then jump into the 1000's. When I reboot to get rid of the latency, there will be no IDE drive and it will boot straight to the SATA. If the Sata is plugged in solo, the MBR will be missing and have to be repaired. The IDE drive will magically reappear if I leave it UNPLUGGED from the power supply for a while, I've not determined the "exact" length of time as I was surprised to see it function after not even showing in the drive register. Nonetheless, unplug the IDE drive's power cable and leave it unplugged for 6+ hours like I did and see if it shows back up when you re-plug it in. I have been reading some things about ASUS MB's and I'm beginning to question this MB's bios.

MB: M2A-[COLOR=#0072bc !important][COLOR=#0072bc !important]VM[/COLOR][/COLOR] HDMI, AMD 3800+ Dual Core [COLOR=#0072bc !important][COLOR=#0072bc !important]64 [COLOR=#0072bc !important]bit[/COLOR][/COLOR][/COLOR], 3GB ram, internal ATI video.

Hope this helps.

Addendum: I had Windows 7 RC on this same system for 10 months with NO ISSUE. Installed the 1TB without issue and both drives played nicely together. These issues began when I was forced to change to the released version of Windows Home Premium.

You may see if you can find a BIOS update, and try looking for updated Chipset drivers too.

Go here and search for your motherboard model in the left pane: http://support.asus.com/download/Download.aspx?SLanguage=en-us

Sattracer said:

Addendum: I had Windows 7 RC on this same system for 10 months with NO ISSUE. Installed the 1TB without issue and both drives played nicely together. These issues began when I was forced to change to the released version of Windows Home Premium.

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You make a very good argument for a full and complete virus scan.

My preference in a situation like this is A-Squared.