XP can't boot -- hard disk not detected

[bruiser]

This may be considered OT, so if anyone can point me to a good hardware
group, please do.

I'm running WinXP Home on a one-year-old system (P4/2.40Ghz Northwood, 1GB
RD-RAM, Western Digital 100GB/7200 HD, Intel D850MV ATA 100 MB). It's been
rock solid. Suddenly this morning, upon rebooting from doing an image of the
C: drive, the HD is no longer being detected. I tried using Western's
diagnostic disk and it can't find the drive either. Ditto for the
DriveImage's Recovery Disk, PM's, and the XP install disk. The BIOS IDs the
HD and its advanced settings are all intact, but the it doesn't show in the
list of Boot Devices.

Guess my question is: has the drive gone south? There hasn't been any
warnings that I've noticed (no problems accessing files/folders), but I've
never had a HD die on me before so I really don't know what to expect. Is it
more probable that the MB, cable (which is connected securely) or something
else might be to fault?

Thanks,
Bruce

 

[GSV Three Minds in a Can]

Bitstring <[email protected]>, from the wonderful person

Thanks, bud. You're the second to suggest the freezer route (I really
thought he was pulling my leg).

Nope, it really does work - sometimes.

No, the cables are secure, but I've been thinking about getting a second HD
anyway, so I'll try a new one with this cable and see what happens.

Good plan. I try never to run a system with only one HDD in .. with
two, you always have a recovery route if one goes bad, as long as
you're not dumb enough to stripe (RAID0) them.

As far
as returning it to WD, I'd probably have to return it to ABS, as I'm pretty
sure it's OEM.

Depends what WD's policy is, but for many manufacturers even OEM models
can be returned directly to the maker (which is what the re-seller would
do anyway), if it's within warranty (used to be 3 years - many are now 1
or 2 years ... yep, even the makers know that the quality is an issue).
Check with the WD website.

Thanks for confirming what I didn't want to accept.

Well, you might still be lucky, but as I said on another thread
somewhere, the MTBF of hard drives is generally in the 400,000-500,000
hour range - than means about 1 in 50 die each year (for the period they
measure over .. don't expect =any= of them to last for 50 years!).

 

[bruiser]

Is


You have possibly made the mistake of HIDING your partition when you imaged
it. I don't know what you have there to fix it but there are likely to be
free progs on Tucows that can "unhide" a partition/drive. If you cant find
one, Partition Magic from Powerquest does it.

That's an interesting point, but I don't think that's the case here. I
booted up with PM's floppies and it wouldn't even finish loading the prog,
claiming there was no HD at all. I only image the C: partition; I have 4
logicals on the drive I don't image. DriveImage's recovery CD will also
load, but when I browse to locate an image file, I'm only presented with the
floppy and CD-ROM drives.

And, I guess, bottom line is that I can't hear the HD spin when I start up
the machine. Just kind of a quiet "thunk" and the screen shows the "Boot
failure: system halted: message.

 

[bruiser]

Good plan. I try never to run a system with only one HDD in .. with
two, you always have a recovery route if one goes bad, as long as
you're not dumb enough to stripe (RAID0) them.

Don't know about RAID, except a friend of mine (who has a very similar
system) has always bitched about it, so I've stayed away.

Depends what WD's policy is, but for many manufacturers even OEM models
can be returned directly to the maker (which is what the re-seller would
do anyway), if it's within warranty (used to be 3 years - many are now 1
or 2 years ... yep, even the makers know that the quality is an issue).
Check with the WD website.

I'll look into it. I pulled the HD out and it doesn't say anything about OEM
(perhaps it wouldn't anyway), but ABS's webstore references all of its WD's
as OEM, so I'm assuming as such. As for returning it, my...er...concern is
that there's data on it that I'm not so sure I would want to be out there:
financial, certainly, and other....um.....sensitive, let's say, material. I
don't know how accessible that data would be or if I'm just being a wee bit
paranoid, but I'd rather not. At any rate, I'm going to try the freezer
trick.

Well, you might still be lucky, but as I said on another thread
somewhere, the MTBF of hard drives is generally in the 400,000-500,000
hour range - than means about 1 in 50 die each year (for the period they
measure over .. don't expect =any= of them to last for 50 years!).

Well, it would be great if it were the cable, but I honestly can't hear the
HD spin when I start up the machine, unless the fans mask it, but my ear was
right next to it. All I heard was a dull "thunk" and the screen with "Boot
Failure: system halted" came up.

B.

 

[Bruiser]

bruiser wrote:

Just to let you know, I installed a new hard drive this afternoon, so I'm up
and running again. The freezing trick didn't work, but at least I was able
to restore an image that was only 3 weeks old.

The drive is an 80GB WD. Fry's is offering a $30 rebate on the 60 GB one,
so I'm going to pick one up later this week and use as a second disk. Thanks
for all your advice, much appreciated.

B.

 

[janebush08]

Check out following resource that may help you to find solution:

http://free-tips-tricks.blogspot.com/2009/01/hard-drive-not-recognized-found.html

 

[kklocks]

Hdd Not Detected

I had this message "HDD not detected" for 3days, and was going to put the laptop in the bin! I checked my 2 laptop hard drives on an external caddie. Both were ok. For some reason I put one of the hard drives back in the laptop without the hdd metal protector and 4 screws. My computer detected the hard drive straight away. My laptop is now up and running again.
Both of the hard drives now work. (without the metal cover).