Crashed Slave Drive Won't Allow Good Master to Boot

[xx75vulcan]

Howdy!

I have a 80 GB Western Digital Hard Drive running Windows XP Home
Edition. It recently crashed (possibly physical crash) and will not
load into windows.

The Bios recognizes the disk. The Windows XP Home load screen will
appear, but lock and not complete the load. (I waited over 2 hours and
nothing happened). No errors, just won't load.

I took out the bad drive, installed a brand new 80 GB Western Digital
Hard Drive and loaded a fresh copy of Windows on it (upgrading to XP
Professional), hoping to reconnect the bad drive as the slave, and
recover data through Zero Assumption Recovery program. (worked like a
charm when I did this a week ago to a buddy's system).

I got the new drive (as master) to load the fresh copy of windows
Professional, and it works great! So I shut down the machine,
reconnected the bad drive as slave, (setting the jumper pins correctly)
and turned on the machine.

BIOS recognizes both drives, and windows Professional starts to load
the new Fresh copy of Windows Professional. (after making sure the new
HDD was the primary boot source). However, windows Professional starts
to load, and then hangs.

To make sure nothing happened to the newsly installed XP Professional
load, I disconnected the bad slave drive, and restarted...it loads
fine.

Through HP's recovery disk, I'm getting a No Emulation from the bad
drive.

How can I get into windows using the good HDD as Master, with the bad
slave one preventing windows from starting? (Which is odd- i never knew
a slave would prevent the master from loading)!

Much thanks!

Chris

 

[Justin Brown - SYNACS]

It sounds like the BIOS is somehow configured to boot to the slave
drive first. It doesn't matter why, but get in the BIOS and change the
boot order. If that doesn't do the trick, then buy one of these and
plug the failed drive into your USB bus after successfully booting:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16817106094

In cases like this, it would be $30 well spent.

 

[Bob I]

You could try connecting the bad drive on the secondary IDE channel,
worth a shot anyway.

 

[DL]

Another option, if you have an external usb/firewire enclosure is to use
that.
A physically damaged hd, even installed as slave, can cause a boot failure.

 

[Arkady Renko]

Howdy!

I have a 80 GB Western Digital Hard Drive running Windows XP Home
Edition. It recently crashed (possibly physical crash) and will not
load into windows.

The Bios recognizes the disk. The Windows XP Home load screen will
appear, but lock and not complete the load. (I waited over 2 hours and
nothing happened). No errors, just won't load.

I took out the bad drive, installed a brand new 80 GB Western Digital
Hard Drive and loaded a fresh copy of Windows on it (upgrading to XP
Professional), hoping to reconnect the bad drive as the slave, and
recover data through Zero Assumption Recovery program. (worked like a
charm when I did this a week ago to a buddy's system).

I got the new drive (as master) to load the fresh copy of windows
Professional, and it works great! So I shut down the machine,
reconnected the bad drive as slave, (setting the jumper pins correctly)
and turned on the machine.

BIOS recognizes both drives, and windows Professional starts to load
the new Fresh copy of Windows Professional. (after making sure the new
HDD was the primary boot source). However, windows Professional starts
to load, and then hangs.

To make sure nothing happened to the newsly installed XP Professional
load, I disconnected the bad slave drive, and restarted...it loads
fine.

Through HP's recovery disk, I'm getting a No Emulation from the bad
drive.

How can I get into windows using the good HDD as Master, with the bad
slave one preventing windows from starting? (Which is odd- i never knew
a slave would prevent the master from loading)!

Much thanks!

Chris

An alternative option would be to grab a linux live cd (something like
knoppix) which are generally given away free on the latest flavour of a
local PC magazine. Boot into that and use it to recover files from your
damaged hard drive. If you get any way through the windows bootup
process, it sounds more like a software/os config issue than anything else.

If you don't like the prospect of using linux to recover windows info,
i'd recommend getting a copy of BartPE.

http://www.nu2.nu/pebuilder/

Once you've gotten the info you're after, boot into either environment
and remove the afflicted partition on your old drive, create a new one
and see how you go.
--
--------------------
Arkady Renko
Network Admin
To email me directly
Remove all capitals
and underscores from
my posting address

 

[Justin Brown - SYNACS]

Just wanted to comment on this post by Arkady : awesome tips. Keep in
mind that if you do delete and re-create the partition on the failed
drive, be sure and do a full format, and not a quick one. That way, if
it's a specific area on the drive, you could potentially work around
the bad sectors, assuming the format process finishes successfully.

Really, you might just chuck this drive once you're done with it. Smash
it up a bit, or remove the cover (as I do) and put it up on display
somewhere. You can have a "wall of shame" for failed hard drives. ;]

 

[Jonny]

Howdy!

I have a 80 GB Western Digital Hard Drive running Windows XP Home
Edition. It recently crashed (possibly physical crash) and will not
load into windows.

The Bios recognizes the disk. The Windows XP Home load screen will
appear, but lock and not complete the load. (I waited over 2 hours and
nothing happened). No errors, just won't load.

I took out the bad drive, installed a brand new 80 GB Western Digital
Hard Drive and loaded a fresh copy of Windows on it (upgrading to XP
Professional), hoping to reconnect the bad drive as the slave, and
recover data through Zero Assumption Recovery program. (worked like a
charm when I did this a week ago to a buddy's system).

I got the new drive (as master) to load the fresh copy of windows
Professional, and it works great! So I shut down the machine,
reconnected the bad drive as slave, (setting the jumper pins correctly)
and turned on the machine.

BIOS recognizes both drives, and windows Professional starts to load
the new Fresh copy of Windows Professional. (after making sure the new
HDD was the primary boot source). However, windows Professional starts
to load, and then hangs.

To make sure nothing happened to the newsly installed XP Professional
load, I disconnected the bad slave drive, and restarted...it loads
fine.

Through HP's recovery disk, I'm getting a No Emulation from the bad
drive.

How can I get into windows using the good HDD as Master, with the bad
slave one preventing windows from starting? (Which is odd- i never knew
a slave would prevent the master from loading)!

Much thanks!

Chris

Suggestions:
If you haven't done it, jumper the NEW WD drive as master WITH SLAVE while
connecting the old drive as jumpered slave. Different jumpering than master
alone as when you installed XP Pro to new hard drive, older hard drive not
connected.

Run the WD diagnostics on the second hard drive. Zero fill if okay.
Partition and format afterwards. Do it on your PC.