So this is kind of a weird problem. I've got a WD 160 SATA HD as my master and a Seagate 320 SATA HD as storage and Linux HD. After a while, my system has been crashing lately. Each time, I've resolved it just by swapping the SATA cables between the two HDs. Is this some kind of indication that my MB is bad? Or is one HD bad and just corrupting after a little while? The last time, my WD wasn't even detected in the BIOS, but I switched the cables again and now it's detected and booting up to the OS. I'm thinking maybe my SATA port somehow is being flaky?

Hello will, welcome to PCHF.

When you say after a while, do you mean after your PC has been switched on for some time, or over a period of, say a couple of months? When the PC crashes, what is normally happening at the time, for example, playing a game? Are there any other symptoms, error messages, blue screens of death? And finally, when this problem started, had there been any hardware changes?

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Hey bud,welcome to PCHF,

I used to have SATA problems, where if I set comp to sleep, and resumed, my secondary drive wouldn't be recognized, turned out to be a bad drive.

What you may wanna do is check the cables and that they're firmly plugged in, if they don't have the lock-click things on em, they have a nasty tendency to vibrate out of place when the HD is active.

Edit:
Daarnit, 5seconds too late

hehehehe

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Thanks for the replies guys. So, after a while means say a few hours. That's what was happening yesterday. So far today, everything seems fine. There don't seem to be any other symptoms. I loaded linux on my second HD, and I'm using that right now. So like, last night for instance, I left my comp on overnight per usual, and when I got up today, I couldn't do anything. My mouse was still active, but no menus or anything would open at all. When I restarted, my wester dig HD was being recognized by the BIOS. So I swapped the cables around again and voila! Recognized! I was messing with graphics settings on linux, and it stopped responding. When I restarted, the HDs were both found, but the post screen and boot menu took a really long time to load. Again, I switched the cables around and it booted up just fine. This kind of stuff makes me think the board is being a little weird, but I don't know. Any ideas?

OK will, this is what I want you to try.

Next time it happens. Unplug the power cord at the back of the PC for a full minute, plug it back in and try again. This may seem a little strange, but there's method in my madness I promise.

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Okay, I think it's just my hard drive now. It was clicking a little the other day, but had stopped for a while because I was running linux from my second HD. I booted up to windows just now, and within like 10 minutes that HD started clicking like a mofo and crashed. Looks like I just need a new HD. Thanks for the advice though guys.

Nice work Will. Marked as Resolved.

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Thanks, but I don't think I really did all that much... Just waited a while. Oh well, resolved nonetheless. Thanks!