Ribbon cable failure - why?

[beamerxl]

I noticed one of my hard drives wasn't registering in Windows today, and upon reboot, my mobo got stuck at the logo before I could even get to BIOS. Long story short, after about two hours of troubleshooting, I figured out it was the ribbon cable going to one of my hard drives and my CD drive. I'm certainly happy that it wasn't something more severe (mobo, hard drive), but I'm curious, what on earth would make a ribbon cable go bad? It was less than a year old, as is the motherboard. The hard drive is about 4 years old.

I just moved to a new place, and everything has been running fine for about a week. My new place doesn't have AC so my PC is running a bit hotter than it used to, but nothing ridiculous (*currently idling at 39C system, 34C CPU). That's really the only thing that has changed recently.

Any thoughts? I'm just curious, so it doesn't happen again.

 

[dokk2]

no help here as i just had the same thing happen here lately with a new ribbon cable it just went south one day for no reason hadn't been in system for more than a week or two,,and we're not talking a normal small cable but an extra long,,,server case,,,, go figure.??....:>)

 

[Paperdoc]

I've never had a ribbon cable go bad. But I have seen many times the connection between cable and mobo socket (or HDD socket) goes bad and MAY be fixable.

The most common problem (usually showing up after a few years of use and especially after moving) is that slow natural oxidation of the metal pins in a mobo (or HHD) socket creates a poor connection. If you simply unplug the cable, then plug it back in several times, you often can scrape the metal surfaces clean and it all starts working. When you do this, be a bit gentle - you don't want to damage the wires in the ribbon or bend any connector pins.

If that does not do it, get a new cable.