Hard disk suddenly not recognized by BIOS anymore

[S. Lipson]

Suddenly one of the two large hard drives connected to a Promise
Ultra100 PCI card is no longer recognized, and not detected in the
BIOS. Western Digital 180gb (not detected) and WD 250gb (working
fine).

The only clue I have is that just prior to this problem, the mouse
cable was jiggled in and out of the PS/2 port. I did detect a mild
burning smell around the power supply, but it was subtle and maybe was
nothing really unusual, and everything works okay, except the one
drive hard.

However, in the past, when the mouse port was not used, the Promise
driver would not recognize the attached hard drives, and the system
would freeze during boot-up. I always had to attach a mouse to the
PS/2 port in order to run the PC with the Ultra100 drives.

I later tried accessing the problem hard drive from an external hard
drive case (USB interface), and the system froze during POST. As soon
as the computer was turned on, the external case's green light started
blinking and continued doing that when while the PC froze. (The 250gb
drive worked fine in the external hard drive case.)

I need to recover the data, and need to find out if the problem is
physical hard drive damage, or a messed up MBR, FAT, partition, or
something that might be fixed with software. I'm booting with a
multi-OS boot utility called BootIt NT, but only running installations
of Windows 98se.

Any helpful advice would be much appreciated.

 

[Michael Hawes]

Suddenly one of the two large hard drives connected to a Promise
Ultra100 PCI card is no longer recognized, and not detected in the
BIOS. Western Digital 180gb (not detected) and WD 250gb (working
fine).

The only clue I have is that just prior to this problem, the mouse
cable was jiggled in and out of the PS/2 port. I did detect a mild
burning smell around the power supply, but it was subtle and maybe was
nothing really unusual, and everything works okay, except the one
drive hard.

However, in the past, when the mouse port was not used, the Promise
driver would not recognize the attached hard drives, and the system
would freeze during boot-up. I always had to attach a mouse to the
PS/2 port in order to run the PC with the Ultra100 drives.

I later tried accessing the problem hard drive from an external hard
drive case (USB interface), and the system froze during POST. As soon
as the computer was turned on, the external case's green light started
blinking and continued doing that when while the PC froze. (The 250gb
drive worked fine in the external hard drive case.)

I need to recover the data, and need to find out if the problem is
physical hard drive damage, or a messed up MBR, FAT, partition, or
something that might be fixed with software. I'm booting with a
multi-OS boot utility called BootIt NT, but only running installations
of Windows 98se.

Any helpful advice would be much appreciated.

The drive has a hardware problem, it is BROKE! The only thing you can
try is to fit a new logic board from a same model drive, otherwise you are
into professional Data Recovery, which is VERY expensive, high 3 figures.
Mike.