Bad Hard drive or doing something wrong?

[DJW]

Bad Hard drive or doing something wrong?

I bought a used Seagate Medallist 8641 St38641A 8 GB hard drive on
ebay.
I installed it in a Compaq Presario 5204 desktop machine. Partitioned
it with Seagate's latest edition of Disc Wizard on two floppies made
from a download from their site.
All was going well got windows 98SE on it and it booted but as soon as
I started putting applications back on it and restarting between each
install at about 212 MB of data on it, it failed to boot. Redid it all
again and the same thing happened. So I put my old 4 GB Seagate that
came with the machine back in and reset the jumpers on the 8 GB to non
on for slave and as my computer manual says also set a jumper to cable
select to set and put it in the slave position. Did the partition and
reformat with disk wizard. Started to load more applications on it and
somewhere along the line it gave me a warning at restart that the disk
may be damaged. It ran scan disk I guess in the blue screen DOS mode
and when it gets to cluster 121,289 about of a total clusters or
1,048,864 it slows to a ridiculous crawl. And starts to say that
portion of the disk is bad and locks out for use that section and I
guess moves the data to a new area of the disk. However this is
continuing on cluster by cluster and I ran it all night maybe 15 hours
and it got to cluster 150,000 (something) and is still locking out the
areas as bad.
Now With Seagate's disk Wizard it installed Dynamic Disk Overlay to I
guess both hard drives in order to see the full 8GB of the slave. I
believe way back at first when I tried to use the drive as the primary
it only saw like 2.1 GB of the drive until I ran the Disc Wizard
application.
The question in all this is do you think I have a bad hard drive
somewhere at 200 MB and beyond or is it that the computer being a
1998-99 manufactured motherboard still can not use the larger capacity.
In my computer folder set to view as web page it show 8 GB for the size
for it.
I have purchased a few used IDE 8 to 10 GB drives on ebay that are on
the way do you think I will run into the same problems. And will or
should I use Seagate's application to partition and install the DDO
again. One is a Quantum fireball with is now supported by Maxtor, which
is owned by Seagate as the information I see on line about who owns and
supports who.
Am I basically doing something wrong? Have I missed a step or done a
redundant conflicting thing? Or do I just maybe have a bad Hard Drive?
One more sideline question of many and it only happens when I am not
doing anything to or on the slave but I hear it spin down to off is
that normal for a slave?

 

[meow2222]

Bad Hard drive or doing something wrong?

I bought a used Seagate Medallist 8641 St38641A 8 GB hard drive on
ebay.
I installed it in a Compaq Presario 5204 desktop machine. Partitioned
it with Seagate's latest edition of Disc Wizard on two floppies made
from a download from their site.

may be damaged. It ran scan disk I guess in the blue screen DOS mode
and when it gets to cluster 121,289 about of a total clusters or
1,048,864 it slows to a ridiculous crawl. And starts to say that
portion of the disk is bad and locks out for use that section and I
guess moves the data to a new area of the disk. However this is
continuing on cluster by cluster and I ran it all night maybe 15 hours
and it got to cluster 150,000 (something) and is still locking out the
areas as bad.

Is this running scandisk in file structure checking mode or surface
scan mode? (With surface scan you get a screenful of blocks, with file
structure checking its a blue screen with progress bar.)

If what youre saying is happening in surface scan, the discs stuffed.
If its happening during file check, I'd format the disc then get
scandisk to surface scan it.

I'm assuming that if youve got 2 discs on one IDE cable you've got one
set to master and the other to slave.


NT

 

[Rod Speed]

Bad Hard drive or doing something wrong?

The way to distinguish between those two possibilitys is to run
Seagate's diagnostic on the drive and see what it says about the drive.

More below.

I bought a used Seagate Medallist 8641 St38641A 8 GB hard drive on ebay.

I installed it in a Compaq Presario 5204 desktop machine.
Partitioned it with Seagate's latest edition of Disc Wizard
on two floppies made from a download from their site.

All was going well got windows 98SE on it and it booted but as
soon as I started putting applications back on it and restarting
between each install at about 212 MB of data on it, it failed to boot.

Exactly what happened when it failed to boot, exactly what error message ?

Redid it all again and the same thing happened. So I put my old 4 GB
Seagate that came with the machine back in and reset the jumpers on
the 8 GB to non on for slave and as my computer manual says also
set a jumper to cable select to set and put it in the slave position.

Are you using the original ribbon cable ? Those Presarios are unusual
in that they use cable select which was unusual for PCs of that vintage.

Did the partition and reformat with disk wizard. Started to load more
applications on it and somewhere along the line it gave me a warning
at restart that the disk may be damaged. It ran scan disk I guess in
the blue screen DOS mode and when it gets to cluster 121,289
about of a total clusters or 1,048,864 it slows to a ridiculous crawl.

Thats because its retrying on dubious sectors.

And starts to say that portion of the disk is bad and locks out for use
that section and I guess moves the data to a new area of the disk.

Nar, just marks the sector as bad at the file system level.

However this is continuing on cluster by cluster and I ran
it all night maybe 15 hours and it got to cluster 150,000
(something) and is still locking out the areas as bad.

You can get that effect if the drive isnt setup properly in the
drive table in the bios, when its attempting to access parts of
the drive that dont even exist because the wrong data is used
in the drive table. You should be using the AUTO entry there.

Now With Seagate's disk Wizard it installed
Dynamic Disk Overlay to I guess both hard drives

No, it only gets installed on the boot drive tho it may well be
on both drives because both have been used as the boot drive.

in order to see the full 8GB of the slave.

Yes, thats quite likely.

I believe way back at first when I tried to use the drive as the primary
it only saw like 2.1 GB of the drive until I ran the Disc Wizard application.

The question in all this is do you think I have a bad
hard drive somewhere at 200 MB and beyond

Quite possible and the best check for that is to see
what Seagate's diagnostic says about the drive.

or is it that the computer being a 1998-99 manufactured
motherboard still can not use the larger capacity.

Very likely, but the DDO should get around that. Thats its purpose.

In my computer folder set to view as web page it show 8 GB for the
size for it. I have purchased a few used IDE 8 to 10 GB drives on
ebay that are on the way do you think I will run into the same problems.

If the problem is the motherboard/bios, obviously.
If the problem is with the drive itself, obviously not.

And will or should I use Seagate's application to partition and
install the DDO again. One is a Quantum fireball with is now
supported by Maxtor, which is owned by Seagate as the
information I see on line about who owns and supports who.

I havent bothered to check if Seagate's Disk Wizard allows for that yet.

Am I basically doing something wrong? Have I missed a step or done a
redundant conflicting thing? Or do I just maybe have a bad Hard Drive?

See above.

One more sideline question of many and it only happens when I am not doing
anything to or on the slave but I hear it spin down to off is that normal for a slave?

Yes, the default is to spin down a drive on inactivity with SE. You can change that in the settings.

 

[DaveW]

I think your older motherboard's BIOS may be unable to recognize a harddrive
that large.

 

[Rod Speed]

I think your older motherboard's BIOS may be unable to recognize a harddrive that large.

Thats what the DDO is supposed to be for.

 

[DJW]

Rod,
Well I went and downloaded Seagate's SeaTools diagnostic software and
ran the long write to and check the drive. I tried all of the test a
few times on both drives and other options and the Seagate seatool
application reported a problem of a failure with the drive in question
bad sector or something any way got a red dot buy the drive.
I got tired of all this and just removed the drive it was rather hotter
than I thought it should be when I got it out. At least hotter than the
master drive also a Seagate but half the size was. The two used drives
from ebay showed up in the mail today so I will try them. If I get the
same problem then I guess its not the drive and will have to mess with
other stuff I know even less about Bios I guess???. Lol

 

[Rod Speed]

Well I went and downloaded Seagate's SeaTools diagnostic software
and ran the long write to and check the drive. I tried all of the test a
few times on both drives and other options and the Seagate seatool
application reported a problem of a failure with the drive in question
bad sector or something any way got a red dot buy the drive.

Pretty conclusive. If you want more detail, post the Everest SMART
report on the drive. http://www.majorgeeks.com/download.php?det=4181

I got tired of all this and just removed the drive it was rather
hotter than I thought it should be when I got it out. At least hotter
than the master drive also a Seagate but half the size was.

Some of the older Seagates did get surprisingly hot.

The two used drives from ebay showed up in the mail today so I will try them.

If I get the same problem then I guess its not the drive and will
have to mess with other stuff I know even less about Bios I guess???.

I'd make sure you have a proper cable select cable
too, those older Compaqs were unusual in that respect,
using cable select even with those older drives.