I have a serious problem

I have a G3 (Blue & white). I have two HDs installed; one HD has the OS (9.2.2) one HD has Photoshop 5.0. I run a photoshop plugin that runs a scsi scanner. I have been using this configuration for about 4 years. Yesterday Photoshop froze up everything at the end of a scan and I had to use the power button to shutdown the computer and reboot. When I powered back up one HD made a full disk seek noise several times (sounds like a bad drive if you have ever heard one.) So finally the machine boots up and I have only one HD on the desktop. It is the OS HD and when I run disk utility it does not show the other HD; only one HD shows up. So I open the case and unplug one IDE drive ribbon connector cable, the power supply connector to that disconnected drive and power up. No OS found, I get the question mark folder icon. So I power down and reconnect the first drive and disconnect the second drive. I power back up and I get the No OS found, the question mark in the folder. I reconnect both drives and it boots up; the second HD makes the same sick sound and does not show up as a HD anywhere. So my question is what is going on that the OS wants both HDs connected in order to boot when one of them is not even being seen by the OS? Obviously I want to replace the drive...but it would appear at the moment that I cannot. Really odd.

not sure

XaPHER said:

which one is the slave and which one is the master?

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not sure. there are no jumpers on the drives.