Working on HDD failure

[Diane M.]

I have two HDD's, both IBM's--4 years old if you can believe it.

A couple of months ago, one of them started the infamous ticking so either C
or D is going to $hit the bed.

We got the drive to work by giving it a bit of jolt and has been working,
ever since. Reality bit, so I got a backup drive, so I am safe there.

Now the rub, bootup today resulted in my system stopping at the "Primary
Master Disk, press F4 to skip." I skipped and got Boot Disk failure so I am
guessing either C or D is going to die on me. I have two HDD's, DVD-ROM and
CD-writer.

My question is this. I have only had one other disk die on me and it was the
D drive and it was many years ago with Win 95 & DOS. The PC was relatively
new and the tech was able to determine that it was the D drive causing the
PC not to boot, not "C". Can i just remove the "D"
drive from the system and see if it boots with just a Primary Master and not
Master & Slave when it chooses to fail ? Or is there a simpler way to
determine which drive is causing the problem, once it fails completely? BTW,
giving the drives a little jolt, got the system to bootup properly, at least
for the time being.

I have WinXP SP2. I have never updated the BIOS, but I don't see any reason
to. There have been no problems with this PC at all. I recently updated my
videocard, but that has been working just fine. I do weekly maintenance on
the PC with defrag, a/virus scan and a pretty complete set of anti-spy and
anti-malware scans, along with weekly backups.

Not real good with hardware issues, so perhaps some kind person here will
help.

D.

 

[Rod Speed]

I have two HDD's, both IBM's--4 years old if you can believe it.

Yep, they aint called DeathStars for nothing.

A couple of months ago, one of them started the infamous ticking so
either C or D is going to $hit the bed.

We got the drive to work by giving it a bit of jolt and has been
working, ever since. Reality bit, so I got a backup drive, so I am
safe there.

Now the rub, bootup today resulted in my system stopping at the "Primary
Master Disk, press F4 to skip." I skipped and got Boot Disk
failure so I am guessing either C or D is going to die on me. I have
two HDD's, DVD-ROM and CD-writer.

My question is this. I have only had one other disk die on me and it
was the D drive and it was many years ago with Win 95 & DOS. The PC
was relatively new and the tech was able to determine that it was the
D drive causing the PC not to boot, not "C". Can i just remove the "D"
drive from the system and see if it boots with just a Primary Master

Yes. And you just need to unplug the ribbon cable and power
connector to, no need to physically remove the drive.

and not Master & Slave when it chooses to fail ? Or is there a simpler
way to determine which drive is causing the problem, once it fails
completely?

That may not happen.

BTW, giving the drives a little jolt, got the system to bootup properly,
at least for the time being.

It may be something as basic as a loose ribbon cable
or power connector. Make sure both ends of the ribbon
cable are fully seated.

Try swapping the power connector with one of
the optical drives, the metal tunnels the pins go
into can open over time and not make good contact.

If the problem persists where hitting
it helps, try a new ribbon cable.

I have WinXP SP2. I have never updated the BIOS, but I don't see any
reason to.

Yeah, its generally best not to update the bios unless you have a problem.

There have been no problems with this PC at all. I recently updated my
videocard, but that has been working just fine.

You may have partially dislodged the ribbon cable
at that time. Not hard if it isnt firm in the connector.