Hard drive was fine, now it's not?

[Ummon]

I have this older P4 that I set up a couple/few months ago just waiting for a cabinet. The other day, I decided to use it for a test of s-video, and the drive wouldn't boot. After resetting and finagling the bios, it saw the drive, but even in safe mode would start to boot the desktop and then would simply reset.

I did a repair, about four times, in-between each time seeing if it would boot. It would alternate between not booting (freezing at the F8 screen, counter a 0); and getting to the desktop, a little message balloon lower-right would pop up saying 'found primary IDE', and then it would reset.

I guess I should just slave it in another computer, copy the files, and (best) set up a new drive (because If I ghosted it, wouldn't it have the same issues?), but thought I'd ask first. ?

[protokatie]

Try your idea, or even hook it into another connector in your computer (IE the spare connector for your optical drive).

If both fail, it may be a fault in the drive circuits itself. Remember that there is practically a complete computer on the HD itself, and those chips can be faulty thus causing the drive to behave poorly, or not at all.

Lets hope it is just the SATA/EIDE controller on your motherboard, or even better, a faulty SATA/EIDE cable.

[Teebor]

Hopefully its just your motherboard or cable being quirky

But I just had a (supposedly repaired by manufacturer) HDD die on me.

I installed the OS and worked on the computer one evening, the next morning turned it on and I have never seen so many faults and errors.

From best I could tell either the disc itself was generating bad sector after bad sector or the electronics were just loosing it.

End result was I took the HDD out and threw it (literally) in the bin.


If it has important data on it and another PC will see it as a slave drive but not let you read it easily you could try programs to recover the data like spinrite or some others that you can get online.

You could try running the drive on its side as this has helped me recover data in the past, you might have to try one side and then the other.

If anyone suggests putting it in the freezer this is a last resort, it may work long enough to recover some data but it ultimately ruins the drive completely

[DeLuSioNal29]

Here are some things that it might be:

The fact that it reboots in windows makes me suspect that it could be the power supply.

Usually, it boots up fine, but then when the CD-ROM kicks in (sucking up more power).  It causes the system to reboot if the power supply is bad.

Also, have you run "Memtest86+" on it yet.  Bad Ram may also cause the reboots.  The Memtest software is a bootable program which will bypass your hard drive since it boots from the CD first.  Then it tests the RAM.  http://www.memtest.org/#downiso

~ D

[Ummon]

I just remembered I forgot to try memstest on it. However, I slaved it in another computer and when trying to access the drive I got a message 'drive corrupted or unreadeable', so it might just be boned. Nothing critical, but kind of a bummer because it had a lot of stuff on it, about 70gigs, and some mame stuff that was particular to the monitor it was to go with.

[Ioargra]

I'd suggest the ultimate boot cd, it has memtest on it, as well as piles of other useful tools to help test/diagnose issues, and a bunch of hdd testing tools.
http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/

[ark_ader]

Could be the electronics on the hard drive.  Find another hard drive that is identical and then use the other drives electronics.

Its a pain but it can solve your issue.

[Ioargra]

Could be the electronics on the hard drive.  Find another hard drive that is identical and then use the other drives electronics.

Its a pain but it can solve your issue.

Its also generally a last resort since it can also have negative effects, like differant firmware, differant drive table, etc.

[Turnarcades]

I have two 160Gb drives in my new machine, and found after much programming (and no backing up) the main one went funny on me and would only boot 50% of the time. Luckily I caught it on a good day, cloned the drive to the second drive and now I have them on a constant ghosting cycle so if one goes down the other is ok. This prevents much tears if you've done a lot of custom work on your software and one drive eventually gives up.

[davidrfoley]

If there is data on there that is difficult to replace, you may want to try HDD Regenerator.  It's the best program we've ever found for fixing hard drives.  Another useful tool is SpinRite from Gibson Research.  In both cases, I would recommend duplicating the drive as soon as you have run the repairs on it to back up your data.  Once hard drive errors start, they rarely go away.

[Ummon]

If there is data on there that is difficult to replace, you may want to try HDD Regenerator.  It's the best program we've ever found for fixing hard drives.  Another useful tool is SpinRite from Gibson Research.  In both cases, I would recommend duplicating the drive as soon as you have run the repairs on it to back up your data.  Once hard drive errors start, they rarely go away.

Unfortunately, and I could sense this through your tone, these are commercial applications.

I'll look into the ultimate stuff. I'm kinda burn out on it right now and the project is in an indefinite holding pattern due to lack of a cabinet and CP. Thanks.