Strange hard-drive problem

[Qb_Master]

Hello, I have a kind of strange problem with my harddrives. I have a computer which had an 80GB Maxtor harddrive as the master(which is the one that came with the computer), and a 120GB Seagate hard-drive as the slave. Both of which were working fine in my computer until the other day. I restarted my computer, and it started locking up where the login screen usually coems up, leaving me seeing the windows boot-up screen until I restart. I unplugged the 120GB harddrive(after trying some other things that didn't work), and Windows came up fine. I plugged it in again though and it started locking up again. The BIOS finds both harddrives before Windows starts loading - but when the slave harddrive is plugged in, the bios takes a noticeably longer time to find the master drive.

I have tried switching the ribbon cables, and plugging in different power cables for it - tried working with the jumpers...nothing changes this. I can't figure out why I can't boot up my computer with the 120GB plugged in now, especially because it was working fine before! Can anybody help me out with this? Any help is greatly appreciated. Below is some information on my computer, some of it may help better-understand the problem.

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OS: Windows XP Home SP1 - installed on master hard-disk

Manufacturer: Stormtek

Processor: AMD Athlon XP 2700+
--Speed: 2.167GHz

Video Card: ATI RADEON 9200 Pro, 256MB VRAM

Ram: 2 RAM chips
--1) 512 MB PC3200 DDR133(?)
--2) 1GB PC3200 DDR133(?)

Master hard-disk: Maxtor 80GB drive

Slave hard-disk: Seagate 120GB drive

Secondary drives: Atapi Cd-Rom

Other: 1.44MB Floppy disk reader
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Thanks in advance,
Qb_Master

 

[Qb_Master]

I forgot, I should have mentioned that before the problem occured, my computer was locking up at random times - which I haven't seen it do before. I don't know if that was related - but I noticed that when I ran the computer with just the 80GB drive, the lockups disappeared, so it seems to be related.