Dead Hard Drive?

[PotGuy]

I need a bit of urgent help if you will guys and gals.

This afternoon my brother started up the computer downstairs and it wouldn't load XP, going to the 'start in safe mode' screen, and none of the options worked. It won't start at previous config, safe mode, normally or any of it.

I took out the hard drive and put it in my system and got the same response, and my system works perfectly fine as I am using it right now.

I then took a spare HD I have lying around and tried that out dowstairs and it booted perfectly normally, so seemingly the rest of the system downstairs works alright.

Is this a dead hard drive or is there anything I can do to get it working/save any information?

Any help appreciated

 

[Me__2001]

when you took it out an tried it in your system did you have it as the master??

it wont work if you do that, set it as a slave boot into windoes and try to access the info, it sounds like the MBR might be corrupt

 

[PotGuy]

The jumpers are set to cable select - but they always have been?

It is set up as primary device in the bios as well.

 

[muckshifter]

Go get ...


http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/

... and check the HD.

While a modern PC seem to have/use 'cable select' pre-set, I find old habits die hard and prefer to use Master & Slave settings ... it can rule out any mishap.

If you're lucky, it may just be a corrupted FAT table.

 

[PotGuy]

Go get ...


http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/

... and check the HD.

While a modern PC seem to have/use 'cable select' pre-set, I find old habits die hard and prefer to use Master & Slave settings ... it can rule out any mishap.

If you're lucky, it may just be a corrupted FAT table.

Thanks Mucks but I'm having problems trying to burn UBCD to disk. Apparently I am supposed to get a single .iso file after extraction, but I get about 12 folders/seperate files which do not work as a boot disk.

This was a common problem and they said to download 7-zip, which I did, and got exactly the saem results?

I set it to Master just to make sure too

 

[muckshifter]

Hmmm, can't help on that problem ... I downloaded the ISO file and used ISOBurn to a CD.


Look for one of the download sites that actually host the ISO.

 

[Abarbarian]

I been folowing this thread and downloaded the UBCD in 7Zip format extracted with WIN RAR which gave me a single iso which I burnt with Ashampoo . Worked ok , if that helps at all . Maybe its your extraction program thats not doing the right stuff ????

 

[Abarbarian]

I also used Systemrescuecd which is a small Linux based run from cd distro with some useful stuff that I found to be more useful for my problem .

 

[PotGuy]

You were right AB I wasn't extracting correctly and then I also realised that I was burning directly to disk...

Downloaded Iso-burner, all is good.

Results came back and according to Salvation Scan, I have 1 defect at 27% (88550406).

The Hitatchi scan would not get past the detection stage and quoted me "Unhandled exception 000D at 00B7 224E ErrCode 7520".

I don't really know what this means or where to go from here.

 

[muckshifter]

oops ... bugger

I don't really know what this means or where to go from here.

Replace the hard drive ... sorry.

 

[PotGuy]

Replace the hard drive ... sorry.

Crap.

How can I get the information off the drive?

Is there a bloke I can take it too?

 

[Ian]

If it got to the safe mode screen, it may be that you can still read some parts of your drive. Perhaps try sticking it in your other machine as a secondary drive and see what you can copy across

 

[PotGuy]

If it got to the safe mode screen, it may be that you can still read some parts of your drive. Perhaps try sticking it in your other machine as a secondary drive and see what you can copy across

Well I'm not sure how or why, but this time when I put the drive in Checkdisk came up in windows instead of a dead screen and fixed everything

It all works like it did before now.

I have no idea why it decided to load checkdisk at about the 6th time of asking, but oh well.

Do you think I shoudl buy a new disk to be safe or was it just a freak occurance?

 

[floppybootstomp]

Back it up, replace it then use it for storing stuff that you ain't too fussy about losing.

Seriously not worth the risk to use it mainstream.

Co-incidentally, I had a hard disk crap out on me a week ago, IDE 20Gb about six years old.

And the make of it was....... yep, another Western Digital (the majority of my failed hard drives seem to be made by WD).

 

[PotGuy]

Back it up, replace it then use it for storing stuff that you ain't too fussy about losing.

Seriously not worth the risk to use it mainstream.

Co-incidentally, I had a hard disk crap out on me a week ago, IDE 20Gb about six years old.

And the make of it was....... yep, another Western Digital (the majority of my failed hard drives seem to be made by WD).

I'll take your advice there then I think and drop £30 in a new disk.

This one was a Hitatchi - not too disimilar to the ones I have in my system......and was only about 3 years old.

Poor show really.

 

[floppybootstomp]

Hitachi drives come with a three year warranty.

It may be worth checking Here to see if you're entitled to a replacement.

Of course, you got to prove the thing's faulty first, which may be a little problematic if it's an intermittent fault.

They have diagnostic software at that link as well, worth using.

 

[Ian]

I'm with Flops, back the drive up ASAP and don't count on it for mission critical stuff

Once you've back up, try a detailed chkdsk on it to look for bad sectors - but only after you've back the data up.