My player is ill

Beginning with when I added a second drive to my player, I've had some trouble with it. I added a Toshiba 60 GB drive, and it seems to work...just not consistently.

Sometimes it won't read the new drive when it boots up, and will begin to rebuild the database, and then start the player without all the new drive. Usually, it only takes restarting the player by pulling it out of the sled and reinserting once or twice to get it to use the new drive again. It'll be fine again for a while...until, say..the next day, when the same thing happens again.

I haven't been able to reproduce the problem on AC power at all..it only happens in the car, so I can't actually see what it's doing when the problem occurs...since I don't have hyperterminal in the car, I guess it's just not seeing the new drive.

What stumps me is why it'd be so inconsistent. If it were a problem with a cable or jumper or whatever, I would think it would either work or not work, and stranger still is that the problem only occurs in the car. I tried swapping the drives, and the problem is still the same.

So what do you think? I hope it's not a flaky drive, but again..I would think it would pretty much work or not work. Would it be possible that it's just the drives spinning up at different speeds or in a different order that's causing it to be inconsistent?

If it only ever doesn't work in the car, I'd guess that you might not be getting enough power to the drive for it to consistently spin up. Is it possible that your battery is on its last legs?

I'd say very, very unlikely.

Then maybe you do have a bad cable. I can't come up with a good reason why it would always work properly inside (maybe temperature?), but it's possible, as bad cabling is inconsistent.

I'd take it appart and double check all your connections (including jumper). For some reason, cable issues show up in the car more than at home.