I ruined an IDE hard drive by powering it off during boot up.

[DJW]

I ruined an IDE hard drive by powering it off during boot up. That is
confirmed by the manufacture Hitachi because of the error code I got.
It was in a PC has anyone heard if the same is true for a Mac with an
IDE drive? I have used SCSI and never damaged one but not sure if one
ever lost power in a SCSI only machine Mac or PC at startup.

 

[kony]

I ruined an IDE hard drive by powering it off during boot up.

Define ruined. That should not *break* any hard drive,
though it may corrupt the data. If the drive can't be
partitioned and formatted now, you might need to zero out
the drive (overwrite all areas with zeros so it's not
logically confusing software used to partition it).

That is
confirmed by the manufacture Hitachi because of the error code I got.

What error code and what (software?) was used to retrieve
this code? If it wasn't the manufacturer diagnostics
utility, be sure to run all the tests it offers.

It was in a PC has anyone heard if the same is true for a Mac with an
IDE drive? I have used SCSI and never damaged one but not sure if one
ever lost power in a SCSI only machine Mac or PC at startup.

It's not true for any remotely modern drive in any kind of
computer, only data loss would result if anything.

If the drive is now completely inoperable, cannot be
recovered at all then tell us what caused the power to go
off. Was it a power supply failure, AC mains power cutout,
or something else? If you can isolate that the drive worked
properly right before power went off then ceased to be
accomodating to a zero-fill, partition and format, it would
seem the drive failed but it would be coincidence if it
happened at the moment the power went off. If the system
shut itself off, that might have happened because the drive
shorted out, or the PSU went out of it's regulation spec
thus sending a damaging voltage to the drive.

 

[Rod Speed]

I ruined an IDE hard drive by powering it off during boot up. That is
confirmed by the manufacture Hitachi because of the error code I got.

Bet they did nothing of the sort.

If someone did that, he's a pig ignorant fool.

It was in a PC has anyone heard if the same is true for a Mac with an IDE drive?

It doesnt happen with any system.

I have used SCSI and never damaged one but not sure if one
ever lost power in a SCSI only machine Mac or PC at startup.

Neither has anyone else with an IDE drive in a PC either.

 

[Sleepy]

I ruined an IDE hard drive by powering it off during boot up. That is
confirmed by the manufacture Hitachi because of the error code I got.
It was in a PC has anyone heard if the same is true for a Mac with an
IDE drive? I have used SCSI and never damaged one but not sure if one
ever lost power in a SCSI only machine Mac or PC at startup.

any drive that *could* be damaged by powering down during boot up is a truly
shite drive
and I've never heard of such a thing happening before. If you repeatedly
reset a machine
during boot up it is possible for the OS to get corrupted in which case the
drive may need
formatting and fresh install of Windows - if the FAT table on the drive is
corrupt a repartitioning
of the drive may be called for.

 

[Rookie]

Define ruined. That should not *break* any hard drive,
though it may corrupt the data. If the drive can't be
partitioned and formatted now, you might need to zero out
the drive (overwrite all areas with zeros so it's not
logically confusing software used to partition it).




What error code and what (software?) was used to retrieve
this code? If it wasn't the manufacturer diagnostics
utility, be sure to run all the tests it offers.



It's not true for any remotely modern drive in any kind of
computer, only data loss would result if anything.

If the drive is now completely inoperable, cannot be
recovered at all then tell us what caused the power to go
off. Was it a power supply failure, AC mains power cutout,
or something else? If you can isolate that the drive worked
properly right before power went off then ceased to be
accomodating to a zero-fill, partition and format, it would
seem the drive failed but it would be coincidence if it
happened at the moment the power went off. If the system
shut itself off, that might have happened because the drive
shorted out, or the PSU went out of it's regulation spec
thus sending a damaging voltage to the drive.

In that case, I would take a chance changing the drive board with an
identical one. Wouldn't that offer good possibility of success?

 

[kony]

In that case, I would take a chance changing the drive board with an
identical one. Wouldn't that offer good possibility of success?

Yes if it were a power surge the circuit board is probably
what was damaged, but why bother? Unless there was valuable
data loss and yet, no funds to pay for a professional
recovery center, you'd have to have a working drive to know
the board is good and then might as well just use the other
drive - and send in the original for warranty replacement if
under warranty still.

 

[DJW]

Yes if it were a power surge the circuit board is probably
what was damaged, but why bother? Unless there was valuable
data loss and yet, no funds to pay for a professional
recovery center, you'd have to have a working drive to know
the board is good and then might as well just use the other
drive - and send in the original for warranty replacement if
under warranty still.

First off this drive that went bad had no data on it I care about
recovering. Second it was a vintage 1999 6.5 GB Hitachi brand. Third
the incident happened to a laptop that had a dead main battery I
inadvertently unplugged the transformer brick during startup. Also I
never had a problem with this HD before and it did not sound that it
may be heading for a breakdown.
The bios reported that it could see the drive and had all correct as
far as its specs but after trying numerous things like FDISK and a
reformat plus trying to write zeros to the drive all commands were
refused. I am not that DOS savvy but with help and answers from a PC
news group I tried numerous command strings. NOTHING WORKED THERE WAS
NO WAY TO ACCESS THE DRIVE. There was a suggestion to get an adapter
and put it in one of my desktop Pcs but that was more work than I
cared to do.
The error replies came via the computer's rom or windows floppy and or
install CD plus Hitachi's drive utility. I got a bunch of different
errors, IDE error, no FAT or Fat32 partition found, etc. Hitachi's
drive fitness test utility did give me an error code number, which I
relayed to Hitachi's tech department below, was their answer to two
emails I wrote them:

If the hard drive was in the process of booting up and the power was
cut it
could have caused issues with the hard drive with the read/write head.
It
could have also cause a power corruption error. Unfortunately those
hard
drives are out of warranty and we do not have way to replace that hard
drive. If Drive Fitness Test has come back with the 0x75 error there
isn't
much more that can happen with that hard drive.

I am sorry but the 0x75 error is a mechanical failure and there are
parts
inside of the hard drive that are not functioning. There isn't a way
to
repair the hard drive and we are unable to repair the hard drive as
well.
The 0x75 error doesn't specify what mechanical part has failed but it
is
hard to say that a IDE controller issue will cause a problem with a
hard
drive. I am sorry that we cannot help with fixing your hard drive but
with
that error the hard drive is beyond repair of any kind.


The only reason I asked this group the question is like you seem to be
thinking from most of the reply above is what I thought. NO WAY A
POWERING OFF COULD PHYICALLY RUIN THE HARD DRIVE INSIDE. Now
scrambling the OS code or maybe the for lake of a better word the HD's
table of contents maybe. But I assumed scandisk or a reformat plus re-
partitioning would clean things up for a reinstall of the system
(windows 98SE)
So my question to this group or maybe an insight to it is has anyone
encountered this or watch out not to do what I did. I have been using
computers both Mac and PC for years and years. I have seen and heard
some strange things but this was a new one for me. I really don't
think Hitachi was trying to sell me a new drive or passing the buck
which I think we all know goes on in the computer world with software
companies blaming hardware and vise versa. Sending a person off in a
circle to try and get an answer of fix to a problem.

 

[Rod Speed]

First off this drive that went bad had no data on it I care about
recovering. Second it was a vintage 1999 6.5 GB Hitachi brand. Third
the incident happened to a laptop that had a dead main battery I
inadvertently unplugged the transformer brick during startup. Also I
never had a problem with this HD before and it did not sound that it
may be heading for a breakdown.
The bios reported that it could see the drive and had all correct as
far as its specs but after trying numerous things like FDISK and a
reformat plus trying to write zeros to the drive all commands were
refused. I am not that DOS savvy but with help and answers from a PC
news group I tried numerous command strings. NOTHING WORKED THERE WAS
NO WAY TO ACCESS THE DRIVE. There was a suggestion to get an adapter
and put it in one of my desktop Pcs but that was more work than I
cared to do.
The error replies came via the computer's rom or windows floppy and or
install CD plus Hitachi's drive utility. I got a bunch of different
errors, IDE error, no FAT or Fat32 partition found, etc. Hitachi's
drive fitness test utility did give me an error code number, which I
relayed to Hitachi's tech department below, was their answer to two
emails I wrote them:

If the hard drive was in the process of booting up and the power was
cut it
could have caused issues with the hard drive with the read/write head.
It
could have also cause a power corruption error. Unfortunately those
hard
drives are out of warranty and we do not have way to replace that hard
drive. If Drive Fitness Test has come back with the 0x75 error there
isn't
much more that can happen with that hard drive.

I am sorry but the 0x75 error is a mechanical failure and there are
parts
inside of the hard drive that are not functioning. There isn't a way
to
repair the hard drive and we are unable to repair the hard drive as
well.
The 0x75 error doesn't specify what mechanical part has failed but it
is
hard to say that a IDE controller issue will cause a problem with a
hard
drive. I am sorry that we cannot help with fixing your hard drive but
with
that error the hard drive is beyond repair of any kind.


The only reason I asked this group the question is like you seem to be
thinking from most of the reply above is what I thought. NO WAY A
POWERING OFF COULD PHYICALLY RUIN THE HARD DRIVE INSIDE. Now
scrambling the OS code or maybe the for lake of a better word the HD's
table of contents maybe. But I assumed scandisk or a reformat plus re-
partitioning would clean things up for a reinstall of the system
(windows 98SE)

So my question to this group or maybe an insight to it is has
anyone encountered this or watch out not to do what I did.

You dont know that what you did 'ruined' the hard drive, its likely just a
coincidence or the error code is incorrectly reporting a mechanical failure.

I have been using computers both Mac and PC for years and years.
I have seen and heard some strange things but this was a new one for me.

Thats not uncommon with an unusual type of failure.

I really don't think Hitachi was trying to sell me a new drive or passing the buck

Sure, but they have nothing much to go on except the error code.

It remains to be seen whether the hard drive actually has had a mechanical
failure, and even if it has, it wont have been caused by removing the
tranformer while it was booting. And you can prove that by removing
the power while its booting and not seeing the drive fail mechanically.

which I think we all know goes on in the computer world with
software companies blaming hardware and vise versa. Sending a
person off in a circle to try and get an answer of fix to a problem.

Sure, but they did just tell you that there is nothing much that can be
done now, not that that action of yours mechanically damaged the drive.

 

[kony]

On Mon, 10 Mar 2008 08:47:55 -0700 (PDT), DJW

Second it was a vintage 1999 6.5 GB Hitachi brand. Third
the incident happened to a laptop that had a dead main battery I
inadvertently unplugged the transformer brick during startup. Also I
never had a problem with this HD before and it did not sound that it
may be heading for a breakdown.

It is somewhat incredible the drive lasted as long as it did
at about 9 years old. It failed because it is worn out or
bearing lubrication degraded to cause rapid increase in
wear. There isn't anything in particular to learn about
this drive except that it did very well but suffered the
fate of all very old hard drives. Granted some live even
longer, a lot much shorter lives but it has easily gone
beyond it's expected average lifespan.

It's not necessarily true that a drive will make a lot of
funny sounds before it's about to breakdown - usually the
breakdown (or degradation onto the point it's then
unworkable) already happened by the time you hear the noise
if one is heard at all.

 

[GT]

On Mon, 10 Mar 2008 08:47:55 -0700 (PDT), DJW



It is somewhat incredible the drive lasted as long as it did
at about 9 years old. It failed because it is worn out or
bearing lubrication degraded to cause rapid increase in
wear. There isn't anything in particular to learn about
this drive except that it did very well but suffered the
fate of all very old hard drives. Granted some live even
longer, a lot much shorter lives but it has easily gone
beyond it's expected average lifespan.

I have 2 fully functioning, but retired WD 850MB drives from 1994 ish. They
were huge at the time with most PCs having a single 'massive' 500MB drive. I
have a 1.7GB that still works, a 6.4GB and a few others that all still work.
Of the 9 or so hard drives I have owned the only 2 I have had fail are both
80GB Maxtor Diamond Max drives. Funny how these things taint you - I now
won't touch Maxtor!

 

[Rookie]

I have 2 fully functioning, but retired WD 850MB drives from 1994 ish.
They were huge at the time with most PCs having a single 'massive'
500MB drive. I have a 1.7GB that still works, a 6.4GB and a few others
that all still work. Of the 9 or so hard drives I have owned the only
2 I have had fail are both 80GB Maxtor Diamond Max drives. Funny how
these things taint you - I now won't touch Maxtor!

The only two hard disks that failed so far on me were both maxtors 120GB,
maybe the same line as yours.

 

[kony]

I have 2 fully functioning, but retired WD 850MB drives from 1994 ish. They
were huge at the time with most PCs having a single 'massive' 500MB drive. I
have a 1.7GB that still works, a 6.4GB and a few others that all still work.
Of the 9 or so hard drives I have owned the only 2 I have had fail are both
80GB Maxtor Diamond Max drives. Funny how these things taint you - I now
won't touch Maxtor!

Ok they're that old but I doubt they were used regularly all
that time. I too have some ancient drives lying around that
work, but I only keep them for sizing, template use when
fabricating drive bays to add to cases.

BTW, there's no reason not to touch Maxtor today, what you
buy in a Maxtor labeled box is usually a Seagate (7200.10 at
present).

 

[kony]

The only two hard disks that failed so far on me were both maxtors 120GB,
maybe the same line as yours.

I've had many drives fail over the years, and yet still a
small percentage of the total number. Maxtors didn't seem
more failure prone to me except one series back when they
first went to 7200 RPM, a Diamondmax 8 generation if memory
serves correctly. More recently I've had higher failure
rates with Samsung and Seagate, though the sample size is
really too small to draw any conclusions.

 

[GT]

Ok they're that old but I doubt they were used regularly all
that time. I too have some ancient drives lying around that
work, but I only keep them for sizing, template use when
fabricating drive bays to add to cases.

They ran out of space and were overtaken by faster, larger drivers before
they ran out of steam!

BTW, there's no reason not to touch Maxtor today, what you
buy in a Maxtor labeled box is usually a Seagate (7200.10 at
present).

True!

 

[Dan]

They ran out of space and were overtaken by faster, larger drivers before
they ran out of steam!


True!

While we are at HDD failure talk, I have this Maxtor 40GB that gets
detected by my compaq P3 fine, but FDISK can't see it. Any utility to
get out of this?

 

[kony]

While we are at HDD failure talk, I have this Maxtor 40GB that gets
detected by my compaq P3 fine, but FDISK can't see it. Any utility to
get out of this?

Run the HDD manufacturer's diagnostics including all tests.
Also try that with it hooked up to another system. Was the
drive functional in the Compaq or from another system? Does
the Compaq support 40GB capacity?

 

[Dan]

Run the HDD manufacturer's diagnostics including all tests.
Also try that with it hooked up to another system. Was the
drive functional in the Compaq or from another system? Does
the Compaq support 40GB capacity?

I should correct something first. FDISK message is "cannot access the
disk". Yes, I do have a Seagate 40G that runs fine on the same
machine.
Thanks for this about running manufacturer diagnostics--I'll look up
and try them first.

 

[kony]

I should correct something first. FDISK message is "cannot access the
disk". Yes, I do have a Seagate 40G that runs fine on the same
machine.
Thanks for this about running manufacturer diagnostics--I'll look up
and try them first.

If the manufacturer utils also provide a zero-fill
(sometimes called a low-level format but is actually a
zero-fill utility) you might also try running that in case
the drive has a nonstandard logical arrangment FDISK can't
understand. What is the history of this drive, where did it
come from and was it known working prior to your present
attempts in a new system?