encyclo - 7:20 pm on Oct 12, 2004 (gmt 0)

I've got a big problem with an elderly machine and a new hard drive. I bought an 80Gb hard drive a month ago and installed it in an old machine, which has parts dating back to 1991. Much of the machine's internals have subsequently been changed, but stuff like the CD-rom and floppy drive are original - perhaps with other things as well.

The problem is that, on startup, I can hear the new hard drive "firing up" very suddenly, and the drive is subsequently not recognised or available. After about 10 reboots, it decided to work at boot time, but it locked up after 5 minutes (and the OS with it). There is a similar problem with a DVD drive in the same machine which searches endlessly but can't read the CD - but that may not be related.

So, how can I go about diagnosing where the problem lies? Could it be a faulty new drive, or is there some 13 year-old widget on the machine that could be causing the trouble?