I have a Dell XPS420 that has been intermittently coming up with the error message "error auto-sensing secondary master hard drive" when booting. Sometimes, just rebooting solved the problem but then it became stubborn and would not reboot. I checked the BIOS and sure enough, the 2nd drive was not detected. ( I have two 500 GB sata drives in the system that are not set up in a RAID config. Just drives C and D.)
I used that second drive only for system backups.
I physically disconnected the 2nd drive and turned it off in BIOS and everything has been working fine for a week now. Today, I booted and got the same error message. When I hit F1 to continue, it said there was no PRIMARY master. I checked the BIOS and lo-an-behold, it doesn't see the primary drive now.
I unplugged the computer for an hour and then started it back up. It works fine now.
I find it hard to believe that both drives failed within a week or so of each other. Could there be something else that is causing this problem? SATA controller maybe? I'm at a loss.
I am running Windows 7 and thankfully have the system backed up to two other drives.
I used that second drive only for system backups.
I physically disconnected the 2nd drive and turned it off in BIOS and everything has been working fine for a week now. Today, I booted and got the same error message. When I hit F1 to continue, it said there was no PRIMARY master. I checked the BIOS and lo-an-behold, it doesn't see the primary drive now.
I unplugged the computer for an hour and then started it back up. It works fine now.
I find it hard to believe that both drives failed within a week or so of each other. Could there be something else that is causing this problem? SATA controller maybe? I'm at a loss.
I am running Windows 7 and thankfully have the system backed up to two other drives.