Tempermental New Hard Drive?

[LC_575]

I recently bought and installed a new hd for my 575: an HP SureStore 1.2gig scsi drive. Last night I had no issues initializing the drive and copying over my files (I actually put the old drive into the cd drive bay to do this). Now today the drive only seems to actually work when it feels like it. The drive takes a LONG time to spin up (i'm guessing this is normal; its always done that); oftentimes the happy mac hasn't appeared yet by the time the screen has heated up. However, now half of the time the mac will simply hang at the gray screen, no icons displayed. The drive only seems to cooperate if I remove and reseat it.

However, I had to do some unorthodox moves to get this drive installed. The little drive interface insert wouldn't fit simply because the power and data connectors are about 1/2 mm too far apart, so I cut it in half with a hacksaw, leaving me w/ separate data and power connectors. This "solution" seems to work - my only fear is that the data connector may not line up 100% accurately with the port in the mac, causing one or two pins to lose contact, preventing the mac from booting.

But when the drive DOES work, Mac OS runs fine, in fact faster than the old drive. So now I'm looking for something else to blame this on - my custom PRAM battery maybe?

 

[LC_575]

Nevermind, I figured out what the problem was.

 

[Osgeld]

which was?

 

[LC_575]

This is my theory:

The rear of the drive has an array of exposed pins (for settings), which almost stick out a pit. They face the LC's rear case cover, which is plastic but metal clad on the inside side. I think that the pins were conducting electricity via this metal surface, although I'm not sure if they're close enough to do this when the cover is closed. Either way, I put some tape over the contact area, and the problem seems to be fixed.