desperate help sought regarding hard disks - risk losing lots of data - PLEASE HELP !

[A_Newsreader]

I have two machines.

machine A -
2.2dual xeon,
1024mb ram,
supermicro P4DC6 mb,
2 x Maxtor 80gb hard disks (can't see the name on them but the model
is D740x-6L).

machine B -
1000mhz dual Piii
1024ram,
supermicro P6DGU,
several small seagate scsi drives.

I purchased a Maxtor Diamondplus 9 200gb to put into machine a and
take out 1 of the 80gb maxtors from that machine. Then to replace all
the scsi devices in Machine B with that 80gb drive.

Problem 1

when I installed the 200gb drive into machine A, I noticed that
windows was only recognising it as a 128gb harddisk. So I did a
search on google, noticed that on Microsoft support there was an
article about what to do. Basically, update the machine Bios, update
the registry, and this should fix the problem.

Well, I downloaded the latest bios from Supermicro and DID EXACTLY
WHAT IT SAID TO DO TO FLASH THE BIOS ON the Supermicro README.TXT
file. i.e. ALT+F2 on boot up (in fact this is what is said is to be
done on the startup screen in fact on this machine). When I did this,
the machine upon entering W2K started doing strange things - basically
the mouse cursor would stay stuck most of the time, and the machine
wouldn't powerdown correctly. So I contacted Supermicro, told them
what I had done and they said "Oh don't press ALT+F2, go to
www.bootdisk.com" !!!!!.

So basically mistake number 1, I did what I was instructed to do on
the README file and I ruined my machine.

I then reinstalled w2k and notice that if I try and install the
drivers for my grahics card, windows doesn't go much further than the
startup screen (the white one before the blue background) before
becoming jumbled and unusable. So currently I have machine a (until I
can fix it 100%) running in 16 colours 600x800 res.

Windows only sees this 200gb drive as 2 partitions of 99gb each (i.e.
not one whole 200gb drive). And for some reason, I cannot see neither
of the 80gb drives in explorer.

If I go to the Manage screen under My Computer and look at disk
information, I see the 2 drives (one incidently has more than 90gb
assigned to it !) but if I try to format this drive, it just doens't
work.

I tried putting this 80gb hard disk into the other machine (b) to do a
clean install of w2k on it and in this machine the computer will not
even format it (even when trying to install w2k) it says bad disk
back up and replace. Yet I can't believe that.

The only things I think I could have done wrong on machine a when I
was trying different disk configurations was perhaps not setting the
jumper settings correctly (master/slave ??)

So basically, all due to this BIOS update going terribly wrong, I
currently have NEITHER of these machines working.

Do you think that I've lost this data forever on these harddisks (I
backed up one of them but didn't get a chance to back up the second
one) ??

With machine a, could a bad Bios update cause damage to other
components ??

Obviously I am very annoyed with Supermicro.

Any utilities anyone could recommend to correct these hard disk faults
??

Many thanks in anticipation.

 

[Ruth]

Probably it's a jumper or cable problem on machine B. Your data is probably
OK. Go to a friends house and try mounting your disks in another machine
(your 2 80s).
As for the BIOS update fiasco...your machine A - MB may be hooped unless
there is a rollback image of the BIOS. Sometimes you can go back to your
previous BIOS as long as the the BIOS upgrade hasn't screwed up your ability
to do that. Also you might try just reflashing but doing whatever they told
you to do that *WASN'T* Alt F2
Some days are better than others....

 

[A_Newsreader]

Hi Ruth,

Thanks for the reply.

What do you mean "hooped" ?? I'm sorry that doesn't mean anything to
me.

Are you saying that the entire MB for that machine could be ruined ??
I hope not. Supermicro are asking me to return the Bios chip for a
replacement. What I'd like them to do is send me the replacement
first !

Regarding the other disk in the machine b, I got that 'fixed' - I
finally managed to wipe the disk after using the utility Testdisk.
And deleting the MBR. I'm not convinced that the disk is entirely
healthy (yes the data was still on it until I did the delete of MBR,
Testdisk let me see in dos the directories of that hd) but I am
currently reinstalling my windows 2000 on it and getting into a
useable state. At some time I'll next to check the integrity of this
disk.

Back to Machine A - I'm hoping that all these problems are just due to
a duff Bios, and putting in a replacement chip will restore this
machine's performance.

do you think it will ??

Thanks.

 

[Ruth]

yeah hooped means destroyed finished wrecked
sorry for the local jargon
I didn't know you could replace BIOS chips so maybe that will make every
thing better in fact quite likely it will. If you have to desolder/resolder
that would be dicey, but if its a socket it should be OK. Never had that
experience. Supermicro do sound like someone to avoid alright. I wonder if
they realize their bad behaviour is being discussed in this NG. It would not
kill them to send you a new chip, good grief...it probably has a commercial
value of about 4 cents.

What is test disk?,...never heard of it.

I once did a BIOS upgrade on my orgs Server and it went South.(hmm more
jargon meaning it wouldn't come back to life)..wouldnt boot up no matter
what, and I followed the instructions to the letter. Was demonstrating for
the benefit of a couple of interns as well. Finally i had the random idea
of doing a cold boot...and bingo fixed it right up. Didn't have to update
my resume after all.

 

[Al Dykes]

yeah hooped means destroyed finished wrecked
sorry for the local jargon
I didn't know you could replace BIOS chips so maybe that will make every
thing better in fact quite likely it will. If you have to desolder/resolder
that would be dicey, but if its a socket it should be OK. Never had that
experience. Supermicro do sound like someone to avoid alright. I wonder if
they realize their bad behaviour is being discussed in this NG. It would not
kill them to send you a new chip, good grief...it probably has a commercial
value of about 4 cents.

Supermicro (if it's www.supermicro.com) is a conservative maker of
server-grade motherboards. I've used a bunch of them and they've never
had a problem. They've always gotten good reviews in that catagory.
I've never seen a Supermicro desktop.

 

[A_Newsreader]

I don't dislike the products one bit, it wouldn't put me off buying
another Supermicro for sure.

But I don't think much of their telephone support, nor their email one
liner's for that matter. When there is an 8 hour time difference,
their brevity of information only delays and make's matters worse.

they realize their bad behaviour is being discussed in this NG. It would not
kill them to send you a new chip, good grief...it probably has a commercial
value of about 4 cents.

Supermicro (if it's www.supermicro.com) is a conservative maker of
server-grade motherboards. I've used a bunch of them and they've never
had a problem. They've always gotten good reviews in that catagory.
I've never seen a Supermicro desktop.

What is test disk?,...never heard of it.

I once did a BIOS upgrade on my orgs Server and it went South.(hmm more
jargon meaning it wouldn't come back to life)..wouldnt boot up no matter
what, and I followed the instructions to the letter. Was demonstrating for
the benefit of a couple of interns as well. Finally i had the random idea
of doing a cold boot...and bingo fixed it right up. Didn't have to update
my resume after all.

[/QUOTE]