I probably should wait until I definitively solve the problem before I
post; in that way I wouldn't give so much false info, but reporting
during the troubleshooting process has merits too. You get a better
picture of what I'm going through.

I was wrong about the power being bad. Using a volt meter, all the pins
on all the drive power leads show they are what they're supposed to be,
5 or 12 volts or common.

I modernized the software on the 15 GB drive, the spare one I
previously had out of the computer and the one I'm now running Windows
off of. I had it connected last 14 months ago, and I only did a few
things to it then. It's like looking into the past. Everything's
changed now. Back then, I even used a different boobie picture for the
wallpaper.

But when I tried to connect the previous C drive, a 120 GB, Windows
tried to boot, flashed the first black-background Windows flag screen,
the briefly went to the blue-screen stop (it flashed to quickly to read
the error, then it tried to reboot again. It looks like it would cycle
again and again if it didn't intervene.

I'll have to test some arrangements to be sure about this, but I
mistakenly thought the power lead was bad because I think when the bad
120 GB drive is connected to a power connector, the other connector on
that cable doesn't work.

The 120 GB drive gave some indications it was about to fail:
http://snipurl.com/l6j0 . SIGuardian v 1.7 predicted the drive would
fail, and you, Ron Speed, said the Seek Error Rate was high. I was
sort-of preparing for the drive to fail, but it didn't, so I took my
guard down some as time went on. Anyway, there's no tragic data loss.

Now I'm running with the 15 GB (master-jumpered on the center connector
of an ATA ribbon) as the system/boot, and the 80 GB (slave-jumpered on
the end connector of the same ATA ribbon) as additional storage.

Next, I'm going to put in the 160 GB drive.

After that, I'll see if I can hook up the old 120 GB, the previous C
drive, so I can get some of the recent files. But if I can't get them,
it's no big deal.
--
(-) Nehmo (-)