Both SATA Drives stopped working at same time? NEED HELP ASAPPLEASE.

[Ward]

First hello and thanks for taking the time to read this. I'm stuck.

I have a home built computer that I built about 3 years ago. Inside
are two WD 200 GB SATA drives. The are just single drives, not being
used for RAID or anything fancy.

Well the other day, my machine wouldn't boot. Says that it can't find
the windows\system32 or whatever directory. Says to boot from my xp
cd and type 'r' for the recovery console. Now this has happened once
in the past and I did it and it workd.

This time it didn't work. When in the recovery console of the xp cd,
xp said that it could not find any drives installed in my machine.

First thing I thought of was that something got mucked up in my BIOS
somehow that would prevent the installer from seeing EITHER of my
drives. Too much of a coincedence I thought. I checked and
everything is just as I have left it.

In the POST sequence, both drives are located and shown as being
hooked up and active, so I know the computer (at least the BIOS) is
finding the drives, but nothing else is.

My next thought was that I'd put in my HAWK PE emergency boot cd and
see what's up. Well, even in HAWK PE, the drives are not seen.
Troubling to say the least.

I've even run WD Data Lifegaurd Diagnostics from cd and again, both
drives pass with flying colors.

So, as you might imagine I'm stumped here. I just don't know what to
try next. At this point, I'd just like to get some data off them and
then reinstall everything from scratch.

Please help.

Thanks,

Ward

 

[Bob Harris]

XP usually requires special drivers to see SATA hard drives. That is true
of windows mode and even the recovery console. It is also true of most "PE"
CDs, such as Bart's. On the other hand, many LINUX-based rescue CDs have
the drivers already included, for example, KNOPPIX. A simple DOS floppy can
also see them without special drivers, as can any bootable CD built on DOS.

When booting from one of these CDs, look for a prompt to hit F6 to install
SCSI/RAID drivers. That also applies to SATA drivers.

The drivers must be on a floppy, not on a CD, due to the limitations
(stupidity) of the windows XP installer.

The drivers come from the motherboard maker, since they are for the SATA
controllers. They never some from the hard drive maker.

As for WHY you would have to re-install drivers, which should already have
been there since day one? Well, drivers are merely files, and like all
files can become corrupt over time.

By the way, if the drivers allow you to boot into the recovery console, that
is merely a proof of principle. To get drivers re-installed into XP
(windows mode), you will probably need to do a "repair installation of XP".
See the following links about repair:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;315341



http://www.webtree.ca/windowsxp/repair_xp.htm



http://www.extremetech.com/print_article/0,3998,a=23979,00.asp



http://www.geekstogo.com/forum/Repair-Windows-XP-t138.html



By the way, a repair is usually NOT supported by an OEM copy of XP. There,
the only option is a clean install.

 

[windmap]

You may want read this Microsoft Article
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/307545/en-us

 

[Anna]

First hello and thanks for taking the time to read this. I'm stuck.

I have a home built computer that I built about 3 years ago. Inside
are two WD 200 GB SATA drives. The are just single drives, not being
used for RAID or anything fancy.

Well the other day, my machine wouldn't boot. Says that it can't find
the windows\system32 or whatever directory. Says to boot from my xp
cd and type 'r' for the recovery console. Now this has happened once
in the past and I did it and it workd.

This time it didn't work. When in the recovery console of the xp cd,
xp said that it could not find any drives installed in my machine.

First thing I thought of was that something got mucked up in my BIOS
somehow that would prevent the installer from seeing EITHER of my
drives. Too much of a coincedence I thought. I checked and
everything is just as I have left it.

In the POST sequence, both drives are located and shown as being
hooked up and active, so I know the computer (at least the BIOS) is
finding the drives, but nothing else is.

My next thought was that I'd put in my HAWK PE emergency boot cd and
see what's up. Well, even in HAWK PE, the drives are not seen.
Troubling to say the least.

I've even run WD Data Lifegaurd Diagnostics from cd and again, both
drives pass with flying colors.

So, as you might imagine I'm stumped here. I just don't know what to
try next. At this point, I'd just like to get some data off them and
then reinstall everything from scratch.

Please help.

Thanks,

Ward

Ward:
First of all it would be helpful if you would describe just what your
*secondary* HDD contains. Is it a "clone" of your day-to-day booting HDD so
that it contains (presumably) a functioning OS? Or is it just used for
general backup purposes so that no OS exists on that secondary HDD?

At this point I think the best course of action for you is to undertake a
Repair install of the XP OS as Bob Harris recommended. As you've described
the problem this does not appear to me as a SATA controller driver issue in
terms of needing an auxiliary SATA controller driver.

But before getting to the Repair install of the OS...

This probably won't correct the problem but it's worth a try at this
point...
Get back into the Recovery Console and try invoking the sfc /scannow command
In case you're not familiar with this command see
http://www.updatexp.com/scannow-sfc.html for instructions re using this
command.

As to the Repair install...
If you're familiar with undertaking a Repair install, just disregard the
following...

Assuming you have a non-OEM-branded XP installation CD at your disposal and
not merely an OEM recovery CD or recovery partition situation, you might
consider running a Repair install of the XP OS at this point-in-time in view
of your other futile attempts to get the system up & running.

Assuming you've never done this before here's some general info on the
process...

Undertaking a Repair install of the OS is a relatively straightforward
process. It would be roughly akin to making a fresh install of the OS, but
in nearly every case your existing programs & user-created data would be
retained. Notice I said "nearly". While it would be a rather rare situation
where data would be lost or corrupted as a result of the Repair install, and
as unlikely as it may be, it *could* happen.

So if there are any programs and/or other data on your present drive that
are absolutely crucial to you and you could not tolerate their loss, then I
would strongly suggest that before undertaking this Repair install operation
that you first either make a "clone" of your existing HDD (using a disk
cloning/disk imaging program) or, copy whatever data you can to your
secondary HDD if the data is not already on that drive. While it's a
relatively rare event that a loss or corruption of data will occur even when
the Repair install is unsuccessful, it *can* happen. So be aware of this.

There are a number of websites that contain step-by-step instructions for
undertaking a Repair install. It's not a difficult process and not terribly
time-consuming. It's roughly similar to making a fresh install of the XP OS.
If you do a Google search on "XP repair install", you'll be pointed to many
of these sites. Here are a few...
http://www.michaelstevenstech.com/XPrepairinstall.htm#RI
http://www.webtree.ca/windowsxp/repair_xp.htm
http://www.geekstogo.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=138
http://www.windowsreinstall.com/winxppro/installxpcdrepair/indexfullpage.htm
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=KB;EN-US;Q315341&ID=KB;EN-US;Q315341

Assuming the Repair install is successful, you should use your A-V program
to immediately check out your PC for any virus infestation. Also, you will
need to download/install *all* the MS critical updates since SP2. (I'm
assuming that if you undertake this Repair install of the XP OS, you will be
doing so with a XP installation CD that contains SP2). That, of course, is
one of the downsides re undertaking a Repair install in that it's usually an
onerous task to download all the Critical Updates from MS especially if you
have a dialup phone connection rather than broadband.

Anyway, give this some thought if you can't get your system back to a
functional state any other way.
Anna