Laptop Quit

[OldGuy]

Working on it and it froze solid.
Booted and says can't find OS.
BIOS says C: Drive is NONE. CD shows up.
So the fairly new HHD has died completely?
Yikes!
And Acronis Drive Monitor said it was in great shape. SMART was all OK
and very few errors.

So ... what next?

Recovery Suggestions please or ...

(don't rattle on about backups since all pertinent data is backed up
multiple places.)

 

[Good Guy]

Working on it and it froze solid.
Booted and says can't find OS.
BIOS says C: Drive is NONE. CD shows up.
So the fairly new HHD has died completely?
Yikes!
And Acronis Drive Monitor said it was in great shape. SMART was all OK
and very few errors.

So ... what next?

Recovery Suggestions please or ...

(don't rattle on about backups since all pertinent data is backed up
multiple places.)

First check the connections to see if they are all correctly set. You
say it is new HD so it looks like the connections problem.

 

[casey.o]

Working on it and it froze solid.
Booted and says can't find OS.
BIOS says C: Drive is NONE. CD shows up.
So the fairly new HHD has died completely?
Yikes!
And Acronis Drive Monitor said it was in great shape. SMART was all OK
and very few errors.

So ... what next?

Recovery Suggestions please or ...

(don't rattle on about backups since all pertinent data is backed up
multiple places.)

It might not be the drive, it could be another problem in the computer.
Can you boot it from a dos floppy? (I suppose there is no floppy
drive). Maybe you can set the bios to boot from a USB, or try to boot
from an XP install CD. It could be a bad system battery, which caused
the bios to not recall the drive. Check the bios to see if the drive is
noted. If not, set it up. Then retry.

If all else fails, get one of those cables that will fit your type of
drive, and plug it into the USB on another computer. That will tell you
if the drive is ok. (and you can access your data). You can buy those
cables on ebay and at computer stores. I'm not sure what they are
called. Maybe someone else can note the correct name for them.....

 

[Paul]

Working on it and it froze solid.
Booted and says can't find OS.
BIOS says C: Drive is NONE. CD shows up.
So the fairly new HHD has died completely?
Yikes!
And Acronis Drive Monitor said it was in great shape. SMART was all OK
and very few errors.

So ... what next?

Recovery Suggestions please or ...

(don't rattle on about backups since all pertinent data is backed up
multiple places.)

If the hard drive was a refurb, this would not surprise me.

The usual procedure would be to test the drive in another computer.
If it is SATA, you can easily cable it up to your desktop (for 2.5" drives).
If it happened to be a 44 pin IDE, you'd need a 44 pin to 40 pin
adapter, to connect to a ribbon cable interface on your desktop.

The reason for connecting it directly to the computer, is so you
can pop into the BIOS and see if it registers as (NONE) there as well.
As that's a very quick test for a dead drive. If it says (NONE) in the
BIOS, I don't know of any effective thing you can do from the OS
to change that.

Testing it in the desktop, eliminates the laptop as the source
of the problem. If testing points at the laptop, pull the battery
from the laptop and leave it over night with no power source. Just
in case it is "micro latchup" in the Southbridge.

Another quick note about SATA - there is no means in the interface
to assert RESET. If you ever find a SATA drive has "gone nuts", as
has happened to me a couple times, this can be solved by completely
powering down the computer. Then powering up again. Power cycling
resets a SATA drive, whereas pushing the reset button on the front
of the computer, does nothing. The thing is, back in the IDE
(ribbon cable) era, there was a separate reset signal on the cable.
And that guarantees, that pressing reset on the front of the computer,
restores sanity to the hard drive. Whereas, the data cable on SATA,
has no such mechanism. If the drive goes insane, the only option
is to remove all power. This observation hadn't occurred to me,
until my first incident involving drive insanity. It would not
have occurred to me there was no reset signal on the cable. (And
if there was an in-band signalling scheme intended on SATA, such
as a coding violation trick, it didn't work.)

So don't condemn the drive just yet - if it was temporary insanity,
a power cycle will fix it. If it happens too much, replace the drive.
I've only had two insanity incidents here, and haven't replaced any
drives due to the low frequency of occurrence (one drive has 14,000
hours on it) .

Paul

 

[micky]

It might not be the drive, it could be another problem in the computer.
Can you boot it from a dos floppy? (I suppose there is no floppy
drive). Maybe you can set the bios to boot from a USB, or try to boot
from an XP install CD.

Better IMO than these is to use a Hirems CD. Download and burn one on
another computer and then boot from it.

http://www.hirensbootcd.org/download/ or just google hirems cd.
They're up to version 15.2 now but you don't need the most recent
version.

If the laptop is not set to boot from the CD, you'll have to go into the
BIOS and change the boot order to put the CD first**

Then you'll have the choice of DOS and many DOS utilities, or better
yet, a mini verstion of XP and its utilities

**Once it's first, if you don't change it back, you'll waste a few
seconds every time it boots while it checks the CD in the drive to see
if it's bootable, and you'll waste even more time on those few occasions
when the CD is bootable. But IIRC I haven't bothered to set mine back
and it I just don't leave bootable CDs in the CD drive.

It could be a bad system battery, which caused
the bios to not recall the drive. Check the bios to see if the drive is
noted. If not, set it up. Then retry.

If all else fails, get one of those cables that will fit your type of
drive, and plug it into the USB on another computer. That will tell you
if the drive is ok. (and you can access your data). You can buy those
cables on ebay and at computer stores. I'm not sure what they are
called. Maybe someone else can note the correct name for them.....

The Rosewill RCW618 is great. It will run any IDE or SATA drive as a
USB external drive. , 2.5, 3.5, 5.25". CD. DVD. Everything
popularly used except floppy drives. It includes a power supply for
anything big enough to need one (which does NOT include the HDD in a
laptop, but does include everything else) If the drive to be tested is
currently in a desktop, you may not even have to remove it, just
disconnect it at attach two cables, one from an AC outlet, and anotehr
from the USB port of another computer. Under 20$ iirc.

Both the CD and the RCW618 will enable you to impress your friends when
their computers are broken.

 

[micky]

Better IMO than these is to use a Hirems CD. Download and burn one on

Looking at the link, I guess I misspelled this. Hirens CD

another computer and then boot from it.

http://www.hirensbootcd.org/download/ or just google hirems cd.

That is hirens cd.

 

[OldGuy]

UPDATE:

removed battery and let sit then inststalled bat and booted: no
improvement
Disk : NONE
Boot says no OS.

removed bat, removed drive and reinstalled drive then bat: no
improvement
Disk : NONE
Boot says no OS.

removed bat and drive.


went to other laptop and plugged USB adapter and a good drive to verify
setup. All good, shoews drive and all files OK.

Put bad drive into USB adapter (drive is WD (Blue) 500GB WD5000LPVX
and is SATA).
It is totally dead and does not even register in windows as anything.
i.e WE does nothing.

Noted that bad drive tick ticked and kept on ticking.

The bad drive was manufactured 17 Now 2013 and bought and installed Feb
2014. Product of Mal-Asia. WD Blue made me blue! lol

Hopefully warrantee good. Now to research for an RMA.

 

[OldGuy]

P.S. Using a VANTEC SATA 6G USB3.0 to SATA adapter.
It is very fast with my newer Toshiba laptop with USB3 ports.

 

[casey.o]

drives due to the low frequency of occurrence (one drive has 14,000
hours on it) .

Paul

Just curious..... How do you know the number of hours on a drive? I've
never seen a drive with an odometer or counter on it, and I'm almost
sure you dont record your usage on paper......

 

[casey.o]

UPDATE:

removed battery and let sit then inststalled bat and booted: no
improvement
Disk : NONE
Boot says no OS.

removed bat, removed drive and reinstalled drive then bat: no
improvement
Disk : NONE
Boot says no OS.

removed bat and drive.


went to other laptop and plugged USB adapter and a good drive to verify
setup. All good, shoews drive and all files OK.

Put bad drive into USB adapter (drive is WD (Blue) 500GB WD5000LPVX
and is SATA).
It is totally dead and does not even register in windows as anything.
i.e WE does nothing.

Noted that bad drive tick ticked and kept on ticking.

The bad drive was manufactured 17 Now 2013 and bought and installed Feb
2014. Product of Mal-Asia. WD Blue made me blue! lol

Hopefully warrantee good. Now to research for an RMA.

When a drive makes that ticking sound, that almost is a sure sign of a
bad drive. I believe the sound is due to the heads jumping around
trying to find data.

Is the drive even spinning? You can find that out by putting a piece of
hose to the drive, and the other end to your ear. Use something like
automotive fuel line or vacuum hose, or even a chunk of garden hose.
(Or use a stethoscope, if you have one).

I've always had good luck with WD drives (mostly IDE types). But
anything can fail. If it wasnt for the warranty, I'd suggest opening
the drive and checking for something stuck. Or swapping the board on
the drive with another good drive. I've done these things. Once
swapping the board made a dead drive work again. But if you open the
drive, get the data off of it quickly, because drives are only made to
be opened in special dust free environments. Opening one of them is a
last ditch resort to saving data.

 

[Paul]

Just curious..... How do you know the number of hours on a drive? I've
never seen a drive with an odometer or counter on it, and I'm almost
sure you dont record your usage on paper......

It's a field in the SMART table. Power on hours
is recorded there.

Paul

 

[casey.o]

It's a field in the SMART table. Power on hours
is recorded there.

Paul

How would I access that on any of my computers? Is some special
software needed? I have both IDE and SATA types.

 

[Paul]

How would I access that on any of my computers? Is some special
software needed? I have both IDE and SATA types.

Try HDTune.

http://www.hdtune.com/files/hdtune_255.exe

Paul

 

[OldGuy]

How would I access that on any of my computers? Is some special
software needed? I have both IDE and SATA types.

Acronis Drive Monitor is frre and gives SMART info. I use it and have
detected drives going bad.