Hard drive failure - question & help needed

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G

Guest

Boot up msg is "Primary Master HD fail". BIOS detects it. Powermax.exe
doesn't see it. What are my options, if any?

Thanks in advance
 
Pssst. powermax IS a manufacturors utility. (Just to be sure, that IS a
maxtor, or Quantum drive, isn't it?)



Anyway, your options are these:

make sure your ide cables are seated correctly.
Try the secondary IDE channel.

Make sure Bios settings are correct.

Try another computer, set it as a slave, or put it in a usb or firewire
enclosure. See if you can read the data off of it (do NOT run chkdsk).
Try a data recovery program.

Send it in for professional data recovery.

Let us know how it works out.
 
My ISP's news server never showed the original message in this thread, so I
may have missed some facts about this hard drive. If the drive is reasonably
"young", it might be worth trying Spinrite. In the past, I've seen mfr's
utilities say drives were history, and Spinrite brought them back to life.
One of them is still running in another machine here 4 years later.
www.grc.com
 
Pssst. powermax IS a manufacturors utility. (Just to be sure, that IS a
maxtor, or Quantum drive, isn't it?)



Anyway, your options are these:

make sure your ide cables are seated correctly.
Try the secondary IDE channel.

Make sure Bios settings are correct.

Try another computer, set it as a slave, or put it in a usb or firewire
enclosure. See if you can read the data off of it (do NOT run chkdsk).
Try a data recovery program.

Send it in for professional data recovery.

Let us know how it works out.
 
JoeSpareBedroom said:
My ISP's news server never showed the original message in this thread, so I
may have missed some facts about this hard drive. If the drive is reasonably
"young", it might be worth trying Spinrite. In the past, I've seen mfr's
utilities say drives were history, and Spinrite brought them back to life.
One of them is still running in another machine here 4 years later.
www.grc.com
Click to expand...
You didn't miss anything. Original message is quoted in full within the
message you replied to. OP was just being laconic. Had to fill in some
gaps.

I, too have heard good things about spinrite. I know they've been
around for many years. And you don't live long if you have a worthless
utility.
 
Spinrite's worth trying, even if just to see software that's a work of art.
Written (still) in assembler, the program's 94 KB (not a typo) in size, and
it works miracles in many cases.
 
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