IDE Controller Failure Question

Has anyone ever has a single channel on an IDE controller fail?

I have an ASUS P5AD2-E mobo that has worked flawlessly for 2 years. The other day, I could no longer write a CD-RW drive connected as the slave to the IDE controller. The master DVD-RW drive continued to wrok fine. The CD-RW drive was from an older Dell computer so I assumed it failed and figured it would be a good time to upgrade to a second DVD-RW drive so I ordered a second NEC DVD-RW drive.

I hooked the new drive up yesterday and it would not work. In fact when I press eject to put a CD in, the light just stays on for a few minutes and then goes out. I also noticed that during boot, the light stays on much longer than the first drive. Hmmmm, bad drive? I moved it the to master channel (connector) and it worked fine. I had the drives (properly) jumpered as master slaves, but I moved both to cable select just to test... same problem. After quite a bit of testing, both drives work fine on the master channel, but neither works on the slave channel.

Only thing I haven't tried is a different cable (which I will try), but I doubt a cable would just fail after working fine for a long time. I have never had a single channel on an IDE controller fail, but I guess it is possible.

Any other ideas?

Thanks for any help!

I think I've seen that happen, although it could be the cable. There are some add-on pci ide cards that aren't too expensive.

Thanks for the reply.

I was thinking of getting an add on IDE card. The problem I gives me an excuse to upgrade, but I want to put off a new motherboard until the conroe chips an boards are readily available.